tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60285604595834216282017-08-12T04:39:15.432-07:00micro-grooveSpinning happily at thirty-three-and-a-third revolutions per minute, not wanting to stopBill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.comBlogger257125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-78911771366432887262017-06-29T14:55:00.001-07:002017-06-30T14:42:54.650-07:00"More bad news from Battersea" - Oh, really? what a massive surprise<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BbPQ_S6orAM/WVYhH8_OedI/AAAAAAAAH9U/eLK5wJT8SPwsRGZPx2Wc4p_YOM62uo4xACLcBGAs/s1600/viewgone2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BbPQ_S6orAM/WVYhH8_OedI/AAAAAAAAH9U/eLK5wJT8SPwsRGZPx2Wc4p_YOM62uo4xACLcBGAs/s640/viewgone2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is that some affordable housing going up just to the south of the rebuilt Battersea Power Station? Probably not. The developers have just been given the OK by Wandsworth Council to cut the numbers of affordable homes in the development from 636 to 389. That's a 250 home shortfall on the promised total. Meanwhile some of the poorest people in the borough continue to suffer the disruption, the pollution and the congested roads caused by this absurd development, aimed at an international super-rich market which has already moved on.&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table><br />It has been a terrible few weeks for London, but a fascinating time to observe how the <i>London Evening Standard</i>, under the new editor George Osborne, has been covering the successive disasters and tragedies.<br /><br />No opportunity has been missed to ridicule the prime ministerial qualities of Theresa May. That is entirely as expected. Slightly more surprising is its more cogently critical approach to residential property developers, and this recent headline - "More bad news from Battersea" &nbsp;- is a case in point.<br /><br />I've written lots - maybe too much - about the damage this unnecessary and vulgar development is causing, how it is blighting the lives of thousands of local residents from Vauxhall right through to Battersea. I used to prefix these entries with "Nine Elms disease" - but not any more, as that suggests a natural disaster, unavoidable. In fact it's a very human disaster, caused by human greed, and so highly avoidable.<br /><br />The long-suspected impact on air quality of so much construction work in one area is given added credence by research published last month (see: <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/south-bank-construction-boom-sends-london-air-pollution-soaring-a3533176.html" target="_blank">South Bank construction boom sends London air pollution soaring</a>, <i>London Evening Standard</i>, May 8 2017). There's also the noise, the congestion caused by endless roadworks and closures and the convoys of ready-mix trucks doing the circuits from Silverthorne Road to Vauxhall and back again. The chewed-up streets, the spilling of pebbles so dangerous to the eyes of cyclists, the way these bulky vehicles dominate the road space, just as the new buildings colonise the sky above us.<br /><br />Now parts of the development are nearing completion, we get an influx of estate agents with their stupid pennants fluttering outside their "marketing suites". Of course they had some bad news too: in March 2016, well before the EU referendum, <a href="http://www.cityam.com/235984/battersea-panic-stations-investors-flee-luxury-scheme-as-up-to-2m-is-knocked-off-some-asking-prices" target="_blank">demand for the sky-high-priced flats (aka safety deposit boxes in the sky) fell back</a> and prices slumped by 20 per cent and more. Demand is said to have recovered a bit since then due to the weaker pound, but it's still far from the 2015 level.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--h8jEiydd_Y/WVPL8CkHPwI/AAAAAAAAH78/sQ0X-0oy8QkKo5-DXryjafxZgSDQP4fsQCLcBGAs/s1600/ESbattersea.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1450" data-original-width="916" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--h8jEiydd_Y/WVPL8CkHPwI/AAAAAAAAH78/sQ0X-0oy8QkKo5-DXryjafxZgSDQP4fsQCLcBGAs/s400/ESbattersea.jpeg" width="252" /></a></div><br />And this week there's f<a href="http://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/property-news/homes-at-battersea-power-station-blow-for-first-time-buyers-as-affordable-housing-target-at-luxury-a111481.html" target="_blank">urther damning news</a> about this place, again reported in the <i>Standard</i>: the developers now want to cut the number of "affordable" flats from 636 to 389, just 9 per cent of the total. This is because their profit expectations have fallen and they need to prop them up - presumably to keep shareholders happy.<br /><br />They say the other 250 affordable properties could still be built later on - depending on the future state of the market.<br /><br />Meanwhile they are still using the fact they have rescued a crumbling national icon - Battersea Power Station - as justification for their greed. Well, they might have rebuilt the chimneys very nicely, but unfortunately the whole building is now walled in by such massive banks of apartment blocks that its impact on the surrounding urban environment is totally lost.<br /><br />The building of high-rise residential towers has gained a painful new topicality since the Grenfell Tower &nbsp;fire. Last week the people building and buying apartments in the new "luxury" developments were the target of an excoriating attack by novelist <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08v8vh0" target="_blank">Will Self, on BBC Radio 4's A Point of View</a>.<br /><br />Self, who lives in the Stockwell area, was audibly trembling with rage throughout his 10-minute talk. But he never let the anger get the better of the precision of his speech. Architecture, he said, was unique among the arts in that it had a direct social impact - and thus a moral dimension.<br /><br />He saved some of his most deliciously withering language for the Nine Elms development: "The very sight of these infantile-looking structures being doodled into being now turns my stomach" he said.<br /><br />The majority of &nbsp;these new residential towers, he said, were "as ugly as they are bad, enshrining as they do not the civic virtue of providing housing for people on low incomes, but the corporate vice of profit maximisation".<br /><br />Well said, Will Self!<br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-3364574989190310332017-05-12T07:42:00.003-07:002017-05-12T12:20:14.914-07:00Taking a view on redevelopment....Battersea and Nine Elms, 2012 -2017<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-anDBvi-rDAY/WRLi2f4Z88I/AAAAAAAAHds/7QvLaaNHeAUUmgneUjBs3PO6LBaayAJzwCLcB/s1600/unprotectedviews1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-anDBvi-rDAY/WRLi2f4Z88I/AAAAAAAAHds/7QvLaaNHeAUUmgneUjBs3PO6LBaayAJzwCLcB/s640/unprotectedviews1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The first cranes appeared in 2012<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>There used to be a good view from the back of the small block of flats I live in. &nbsp;It's in north Clapham, near the Wandsworth Road, and is on the last bit of the higher ground that forms Lavender Hill. So there's nothing but the Battersea marshes and the river between here and central Westminster.<br /><div><br /></div><div>But where once we had views of the old city, now what we see most of are the nasty little boxy blocks and towers scattered along the river, the increasingly baleful evidence of the Battersea - Nine Elms redevelopment. I've watched as the &nbsp;four chimneys of Battersea Power Station came down, then went back up again. Now the huge building is being engulfed by equally huge blocks going up around it. The old gasholders have gone to be replaced by holders of billionaire owners' tax avoidance schemes.</div><div><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fBfd7HMmr0w/WRR7Y402zsI/AAAAAAAAHes/1CYfUN3LAIoaqD7famIU6Q7cgrmibJ9KgCLcB/s1600/lost-views1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fBfd7HMmr0w/WRR7Y402zsI/AAAAAAAAHes/1CYfUN3LAIoaqD7famIU6Q7cgrmibJ9KgCLcB/s640/lost-views1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Battersea Power Station from a fourth floor flat in Clapham: left, on July 6 2012; right, April 2017</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-98ilksDdxWs/WRR7ZAgM2EI/AAAAAAAAHew/9lDcdYTs4YMX-PQvMc6hji7uqM89--hJACLcB/s1600/lost-views.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-98ilksDdxWs/WRR7ZAgM2EI/AAAAAAAAHew/9lDcdYTs4YMX-PQvMc6hji7uqM89--hJACLcB/s640/lost-views.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Westminster and London Eye from Clapham; left, July 2012, right, April 2017</td></tr></tbody></table>No point complaining of course...it's not as though we have a protected view. Not that even that status carries much weight in this world of vulture-gangster property developers. Look at the Richmond Park affair.<br /><br />The funny thing is, I suppose, that all these new buildings are losing value as England commits its xenophobic hari kiri. Perhaps one day soon a penthouse apartment in Nine Elms will be as cheap as it looks.</div>Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-77864243990055335992017-05-11T03:58:00.000-07:002017-05-12T12:53:35.660-07:00Two films, two Brixtons, many gentrifications <a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r4sEf5vk65Y/WRLrPKioY-I/AAAAAAAAHeM/KWDX-6wdtdAP8x6GJU4yTCSKfdyCEKTDQCLcB/s1600/AMovingImage.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r4sEf5vk65Y/WRLrPKioY-I/AAAAAAAAHeM/KWDX-6wdtdAP8x6GJU4yTCSKfdyCEKTDQCLcB/s400/AMovingImage.jpeg" width="400" /></a>Went to Ritzy to see<a href="https://www.amovingimagefilm.com/#a-moving-image" target="_blank"> A Moving Image,</a> the new film about gentrification in Brixton. Emerged 75 minutes later without much new light on the topic and rather disappointed. Another, very different two-part film, coming at the same topic from a different angle, was far more evocative of at least two of Brixton's dispersed communities. This film,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsahZaCm7YM" target="_blank">For What We Are About To Lose&nbsp;</a>- was coincidentally the centrepiece of a small exhibition in Brixton Library, next door to the Ritzy.<br /><br />Talk about keeping it local!<br /><br />A Moving Image started with a strangely low-key sequence of a young woman emerging from Brixton Tube station into the street with a smart wheelie suitcase. The underground arrival in Brixton is surely one of the great full-on London experiences, but it seemed underwhelming here. Maybe deliberately, as this young woman was supposed to be returning to Brixton after a few years out east in the artistic community of Shoreditch. Maybe Brixton seemed rather unthrilling to her, what with her memories of an even livelier high street of the early 2000s.<br /><br />&nbsp;If so it underlined not only the problem of gentrification, but also &nbsp;the whole concept of the movie, which was constantly struggling against itself.<br /><br />On her return to her home patch, this young mixed-race woman, Nina, &nbsp;played by Tanya Fear, stays in an enormous and ridiculously fashionable loft apartment owned by a friend of a friend. She explores the area, wandering the streets with her top-end digital SLR, filming what she sees.<br /><br />She has debates with her equally smart girlfriend who agrees to help with her "project". At first she doesn't know what she wants the project to be but when she gets mixed up in a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/reclaimbrixton/" target="_blank">Reclaim Brixton</a>&nbsp;demo she decides that's her subject - gentrification. Not a documentary, mind you, but an art piece, a piece of art.<br /><br />One great moment in the film only works if you see the film in this cinema: during the demo we see the Ritzy strikers calling for boycott of the Picturehouse group cinemas until they're all paid the living wage. It was one of the few moments in the film that triggered some cheering in the audience.<br /><br />It takes a while to dawn on Nina that she is part of the gentrification, even though her friends keep telling her, and interviewees make it clear. It's as clear as day to the audience, because the dear girl is wearing a totally different designer outfit in every take, and speaks the lingo of the casually moneyed hipsterish young.<br /><br />She befriends a young black guy who is meant to be part of the community but he's also an "artist" and the art and music he makes is a truly terrible. The villain of the piece is a young and very successful white actor who falls for the girl and has bought a flat in formerly-squatted Rushcroft Road - you know the buildings - as a "good investment". He's a villain, sure, but he's also, as we learn later on, &nbsp;a working class lad from Bermondsey made good, whose own family have been driven away from their old neighbourhood. One of the admirable things about this film is that it shows just how complicated this gentrifcation busines is.<br /><br />In the course of making her art, Nina interviews a few people, and these are the highlights of the film; the bloke from Peckham is especially entertaining. The black members of a local community group are suspicious of her motives and one of their members cruelly tells her that her project "doesn't mean shit".<br /><br />By the end of the film you can't help but agree with him. It was really much more about Nina's internal struggles with depression (rather clumsily revealed by the discovery of a strip of anti-depressants) and her romantic life. &nbsp;Maybe it was me, but &nbsp;the scene where she makes the white boy actor dance with her was very odd: were we supposed to be entertained or what?<br /><br />The other main character in the film is Big Ben, a mysterious, homeless black busker and ranter who acts as a sort of conscience of the movie. She films him a lot, and perhaps he should be the real subject of her movie. But as soon as she realises this he dies. There's a nice scene where she dreams he's in her flat and sitting on her bed, and then he disappears in a ball of blinding light.<br /><br />&nbsp;So, perhaps that's it: the revelation that the true soul of Brixton has already departed.<br /><br /><div><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-72M0l30eYGc/WRLrU5T0l1I/AAAAAAAAHeQ/hDObGeb0vOkf7gktob--VOeO9YX-lWozQCLcB/s1600/ForWhatBrixton.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-72M0l30eYGc/WRLrU5T0l1I/AAAAAAAAHeQ/hDObGeb0vOkf7gktob--VOeO9YX-lWozQCLcB/s400/ForWhatBrixton.jpeg" width="281" /></a></div>The interviews with anti-gentrification people from New York and Berlin popped into the film were intriguing; it's only when you go to <a href="https://www.amovingimagefilm.com/your-community/" target="_blank">the community bit of this film's website</a> you realise these videos are part of a bigger project to collect voices from threatened communities around the world.<br /><br />In other words, the director of A Moving Image, Shola Amoo, is trying to do exactly what Nina is doing: he is Nina, and suddenly it all sort of makes sense.<br /><br />All in all, a film's a curate's egg; it's intriguing and ambitious, but also annoying, and it seems that some opportunities are wasted. But, if you've never visited Brixton you at least get some moody rooftop views; but not enough, even of this, for my liking.<br /><br />Still, you have to commend the director for attempting such a complex project, and the film has had plenty of good reviews in the media, so please don't take my criticisms too seriously ( I know that won't happen!)<br /><br />The other film,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsahZaCm7YM" target="_blank">For What We Are About To Lose</a>, is a very well-crafted example of the traditional documentary style, with many interviews intercut with archive photos and some lovely footage of Brixton in the 50, 60s, 70s and 80s.<br /><br />It was made by the Clapham Film Unit, and is in two parts. The first 20 minutes covers the history of the Carlton Mansions squat from the 70s to the final evictions of 2014; the second half looks at <a href="https://www.amovingimagefilm.com/your-community/" target="_blank">Somerleyton Road community</a>. Together the short films are a precious record of what was once the true heart of Brixton, that little bit where Coldharbour Lane crosses Railton and Atlantic Roads, which is now undergoing transformation as part of the <a href="http://futurebrixton.org/somerleyton-road/about/" target="_blank">Somerleyton Road redevelopment scheme.</a><br /><br />You might say that the Carlton Mansions film is only representative of a small fraction of the old Brixton community, the squatters, and that would be true. "Maybe we were all misfits," says one of the &nbsp;first occupants. &nbsp;Former squatters are interviewed inside the astonishing and huge buildings where they made their homes and workshops and studios. There were poignant moments, and also painful memories.<br /><br />One of the original squatters, Dale, reveals how they were actually invited into the building by Lambeth Council, which at the time ran progressive short-life housing schemes, helping people set up housing co-ops and handing out grants to make the places habitable. Dale also worked with Brian Barnes on the famous Nuclear Dawn mural on the huge side wall of the mansions - a mural which is still there but rapidly disappearing under new graffiti.<br /><br />&nbsp;Another guy talked about how they had to secure and guard their squat because Brixton was such a "difficult place" in the 80s. It was not only sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There were hard times, hard winters, fights, a suicide, rows. But also a lot of creativity, and we hear from several successful artists and makers who got their first big break in the Mansions.<br /><br />The Somerleyton Road part of the doc is only 10 minutes or so but an utterly joyous film. Some former residents are brought together in a community centre on Railton Road, and they talk about their lives back in Somerleyton Road back in the 60s and 70s - even before the Barrier Block went up.<br /><br />There are some wonderful memories of blues parties, some fantastic old footage of Brixton market, and even an impromptu performance of by former members of a lover's rock group, who reminisce about the excitement of seeing Jamaican DJ Peter Metro at a Somerleyton blues before letting on they were part of a group of &nbsp;five women who took over the stage from him...."we were not deejays but sing-jays, we took a broadway melody and we ride the rhythm...."<br /><br />One woman at the end sums up the process which is sometimes referred to as social cleansing: "It seems like a plot. They sell your house, move you into a block of flats. Why are we knocking wonderful buildings down to build atrocious things like that? &nbsp;To me it was like a con. That was the beginning of the change."<br /><br />You must watch these films! Catch them on the <a href="http://www.claphamfilmunit.com/" target="_blank">Clapham Film unit website</a> now; there's also a very good, well illustrated free booklet about the films; copies were available in Brixton library, last time I was there.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-33181231677702374922017-04-28T03:59:00.000-07:002017-04-28T04:09:18.296-07:00The new Nine Elms: even uglier than expected<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NJX4mHbA5wU/WQMbY9APETI/AAAAAAAAHcQ/roHQYm_1e5EN7I47DBeMYCNJeW4vGsHZgCLcB/s1600/P4274515.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="500" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NJX4mHbA5wU/WQMbY9APETI/AAAAAAAAHcQ/roHQYm_1e5EN7I47DBeMYCNJeW4vGsHZgCLcB/s640/P4274515.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Let's hope that when the new Wandsworth Road tube station is built in the the foreground of this pic it will block out the view of that ugly bunch of apartment buildings behind.&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Some of that cluster of hefty buildings around the old Sainsbury's site at the eastern end of the <a href="http://nineelmslondon.com/" target="_blank">Battersea-Nine Elms-Vauxhall</a> development are nearing completion - and God help us, what a terrible blot on the landscape they are.<br /><br />Take one look at these pictures, that's all you will be able to stand. The shapes and colours are just so dull, the positioning of each building in relation to its neighbours seems wrong. Imagine the poor buggers who are spending their life savings on an apartment on the 9th floor of one of these dingy erections (OK - no normal people have such life savings, only City rooks and crooks and speculators and you won't feel sorry for them).<br /><br />You couldn't even call them towers; they are neither high-rise nor low rise. They are hunched, bad tempered, and they lean awkwardly towards each other, like a badly-posed group photo of people who loathe each other.<br /><br />It has to be said they are wilfully ugly. In an age when computers allow architects to design buildings of almost any shape, and materials can be supplied in almost every colour, how on earth did they think these shapes and colours would do for this location? The facings are dark grey, tan, off-white and a sickly yellow. The tan is particularly horrible - the colour of the last shoes on the rack in a Clark's sale when everything else has gone.<br /><br />One &nbsp;thing is clear - there's not going to be any shortage of contenders for the <a href="http://www.bdonline.co.uk/buildings/carbuncle-cup" target="_blank">2017 Carbuncle of the Year awards</a>, many with an SW8 post code.<br /><br />Which is a shame, because I have been longing to be proved wrong on this development. It surely will all be wonderful when finished.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lmVzQhWXTxI/WQMbYxXssLI/AAAAAAAAHcU/QfCgufZRybwcUEI8_ifNm-nkdkaNWldYwCEw/s1600/P4274513.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lmVzQhWXTxI/WQMbYxXssLI/AAAAAAAAHcU/QfCgufZRybwcUEI8_ifNm-nkdkaNWldYwCEw/s320/P4274513.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A singularly depressing bunch of buildings hits your eyeballs<br />as you head west down the Wandsworth Road and see&nbsp;this <br />new Barratt Homes development nextto the new Sainsburys.</td></tr></tbody></table>The new Sainsburys has been open for a while. I went there, as I used to quite like the "old" 1980s Sainsburys at Nine Elms that attracted customers from an astonishingly wide hinterland, south east down to Camberwell, locals in Vauxhall and Stockwell, and most of Clapham, Battersea and beyond before "local" supermarkets popped up every few yards.<br /><br />The new one - oh, I am sorry to have to say this - is underwhelming. For a start , it is all up two steep flights of stairs. When you enter that shiny gold and orange building, you walk into a bland car-park foyer with those annoyingly slow travelators going up and down. Who, in 2017, builds a supermarket designed chiefly with motorists in mind in such a central location?<br /><br />The shop itself occupies the normal large space, which could just as well be used for offices, storage, a call centre...a mass dormitory....a rave venue; and who knows, if it last long enough it might see &nbsp;all these uses.<br /><br />It shares the floor with a couple of not convincing concessions. One is called Habitat but &nbsp;it's hard to see much connection with the original yuppies' favourite furniture store in their offerings; not much sign of the Conran dedication to good, useful design is visible.<br /><br />What a shame. No-one expects to love a supermarket, but there was a time when people admitted to some affection for the old Sainsburys, where you would keep bumping into people you knew. These days the store seems to be just an adjunct to the property developers; indeed, with all its inner city Local stores, it seems Sainsburys is a bit of a player int this field itself.<br /><br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-20007652261235645942017-04-19T14:13:00.004-07:002017-04-20T15:06:54.090-07:00The day Theresa May stole Clapham's big radio moment<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KXuOY4XA20E/WN0746ogKTI/AAAAAAAAHVc/SQRiEcTKDGAf-hCoJqAsnsrfcuguIh-nQCPcB/s1600/CHS2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KXuOY4XA20E/WN0746ogKTI/AAAAAAAAHVc/SQRiEcTKDGAf-hCoJqAsnsrfcuguIh-nQCPcB/s640/CHS2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clapham High Street - here and now, but not on the BBC Radio London Robert Elms show last week thanks to Mrs May's election announcement...<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">but where, oh where, was the wonderful Maxwell Hutchinson?</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Was listening to Radio London Tuesday morning.<br /><br />As, to be honest, I often do....working at home, you know, self-employed teacher....freelance writer and editor...you know, well I will get back to jobseeking when I've had one more coffee. And listened to the wonderful and Reverend Professor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_Hutchinson" target="_blank">Maxwell Hutchinson</a> on the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p001d7kb" target="_blank">Robert Elms radio show</a>&nbsp;on BBC Radio London - a local radio station that is often more interesting and intelligent than many of the national channels.<br /><br />That man - the very Rev Prof Max - is quite a wonder. He's a great entertainer and educator on his many and various special subjects - architecture and the built environment, music, the Church and all manner of ecclesiastical matters....and much more. I think he is a world authority on Frankincense. And myrhh.<br /><br />He's been doing this for ages, alongside running a successful architectural practice and being president of the RIBA, as well as a lay deacon. A couple of years back he had a bad, serious stroke. He was off air for months. But Mr Elms and his very loyal, very solid band of listeners, kept the idea of Max alive. By his own account, Mr Elms and his many listeners helped to keep Max alive. And Max came back and again turns up on the show every week, often on location as a sort of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_Rock_(novel)" target="_blank">Kolly Kibber</a> character - find Max in your Manor!<br /><br />This week, the Rev Professor was supposed to be in my manor. I did not know this til 10am Tuesday when I tuned in my dodgy transistor to 94.9fm.<br /><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Poor old Robert Elms was having to deal with people from Clapham; he could hardly conceal his distaste for the place. He cheered up when someone pointed out Clapham Junction was in Battersea and it was only through snobbery they changed the name to Clapham.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TmniGHdXj7w/WPi23nPHw8I/AAAAAAAAHZw/ZFml1FFuiCkOyyT9wfRPAeBVfRgpujcgwCLcB/s1600/churchmoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TmniGHdXj7w/WPi23nPHw8I/AAAAAAAAHZw/ZFml1FFuiCkOyyT9wfRPAeBVfRgpujcgwCLcB/s320/churchmoon.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A crescent moon over the bell-tower of Clapham's Holy Trinity<br />church: maybe Maxwell Hutchinson was somewhere around<br />this historic building, marooned like a ship on Clapham<br />Common.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />You could sort of tell from the way he enunciated "Clapham" (and even slipped in a naughty "Cla'am" which was bound to annoy some SW4 listeners) that he did not have his usual enthusiasm for this Manor: too posh by 'alf, too silly, was what he &nbsp;perhaps was half-secretly thinking. ALso it has the disadvatage of being south of the river, and just south of Chelsea.<br /><br />I sort of agree with Mr Elms ...but I also agree with the caller who said Clapham had always been up-and-coming. But it never actually arrived. Which is (in my view) its saving grace. The High Street is still pleasingly scruffy. It's quite a horrible place but it is also mixed enough to remind you that the Henrys and Banker-wankers and so on are only the most recent and actually quite thin layer of this suburb's social geology.<br /><br />There is still enough social housing in Clapham to ensure that the Henry&amp;Henrietta brigade never completely colonise. Nor any other group of transients, my own lot of of 80s chancers included.<br /><br />Then Mr Elms was talking to some chap who represented Clapham Common, a preservation society. He was in fact in Spain as he spoke. He did a so-so job, hardly exciting much interest in the long and outrageous history of this odd open space. Instead he kept telling us there were lots of fun runs. 'Fun run' is surely oxymoronic. He mentioned also 'Australian rules' football and dog-walkers. Yes, alas he was right - that is now what the Common is about. Sport, fitness, dogs and their owners. And in summer, young people eating huge picnics and drinking lots of champagne or prosecco from Sainsburys then leaving all the rubbish on the grass afterwards.<br /><br />What about the 1985 (?) AntiApartheid free concert? Dr John? Alternative Miss World? Sunsplash? Archaos? Desmond Dekker at the Bandstand? Remember that, do you? etc?<br /><br />Look, you know I am &nbsp;a big critic of what has happened around here, and I wouldn't trust myself to defend it now, to be honest, even though it has served me well over three decades - but when we're on a global radio show, we need to stick together, right?<br /><br />Well, I was waiting with some trepidation to find out what would be said.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2Rjvp-UJJOs/WPi23iT4UuI/AAAAAAAAHZs/CWXjlFT-8Bggnb2vA1QEFW6xkVaPJmGfwCLcB/s1600/oldclaplib.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="293" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2Rjvp-UJJOs/WPi23iT4UuI/AAAAAAAAHZs/CWXjlFT-8Bggnb2vA1QEFW6xkVaPJmGfwCLcB/s400/oldclaplib.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Or maybe he was here, Old Clapham Library on the North Side of the <br />Common. This building was eventually saved and became what is now<br />the Omnibus, a well-used arts centre which is currently showing<br />Jim Grover's excellent photos of Clapham High Street life,<br />low, high and higher.</td></tr></tbody></table>I was waiting for the chance to ring and tell Mr Elms about the <a href="http://www.breadandrosespub.com/" target="_blank">Bread and Roses pub</a>, almost the last place in Clapham I still feel very positive about. A trade union pub with music, free music, theatre and more! The <a href="http://www.studiovoltaire.org/" target="_blank">Studio Voltaire</a>&nbsp;contemporary art organisation also seems like a very good thing, deserving of much more praise than it gets. I'd have tried to mention that as well.<br /><br />But I was also waiting for Jim Grover, the photographer of <a href="http://omnibus-clapham.org/event/48-hours-on-clapham-high-street-a-photo-essay/2017-04-28/" target="_blank">48 hours on Clapham High Street</a>, who was due to appear on the show to talk about his book and photo-exhibition at the Omnibus Arts centre.<br /><br />And above all - I was waiting to find out where in Clapham the Rev Prof had chosen - and even more trepidation as to who he might meet. I began to fantasise. Maybe he will be outside the <a href="http://holytrinityclapham.org/" target="_blank">Holy Trinity Church on the Common </a>- home of the Clapham Sect, one of the key places where the abolition of the slave trade gained momentum.<br /><br />I think that would be the obvious place for Maxwell Hutchinson to set up shop - a church (albeit not that interesting, architecturally) - with some powerful history, and right by the popular paddling pool and temperance statue to boot.<br /><br />Or maybe he was at the the new Library. Flashy noughties public-private rip-off architecture. No café any more!<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-js-TI9GrpnE/WPi23i5u8eI/AAAAAAAAHZ4/4rTA2QzYTBch577HrcOFOKKNtqc1nya1QCEw/s1600/ClapLibkid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-js-TI9GrpnE/WPi23i5u8eI/AAAAAAAAHZ4/4rTA2QzYTBch577HrcOFOKKNtqc1nya1QCEw/s400/ClapLibkid.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This would have been a good place for the Prof Maxwell Hutchinson to hang out<br />with his Radio London crew: outside the new Clapham&nbsp;Library, half way down<br />&nbsp;the High Street. Andrew Logan's mirrored artworks spelling out "Library" <br />are popular with all age groups and are arguably more interesting than<br />the building they stand in front of.&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Or perhaps in one of the leafy upper-crust streets or squares...or in Venn Street, a pleasant enough place. Or maybe he was at the Old Library, now the <a href="http://omnibus-clapham.org/" target="_blank">Omnibus Arts Centre</a> - that would have made sense, especially as those High Street photos are on exhibition there right now.<br /><br />So yes, I was waiting....and then Theresa May said she wanted a general election, and that was that! The rest of the show was devoted to political analysis and speculation, inevitably and properly, of course.<br /><br />Ah well, maybe it was for the best.<br /><br />Clapham is such an odd place now. I don't think it fits Robert Elm's idea of the sort of place real "one of us" Londoners live. Maybe it was once. It does not seem that sort of a place any more, even though, in reality, it of course is.<br /><br />Clapham. Marginal but not edgy. Common, yes, very common. But not cheap, and certainly not very cheerful. Unless you have a city bonus to spend.Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-76267181955477914692017-04-19T13:04:00.000-07:002017-04-20T14:59:41.103-07:00Why I write this stupid blog/ Why do I write this stupid blog?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FxW02Hc4sLM/UVmUskoENeI/AAAAAAAABtA/hF9hi85Zp-cl0soMFQ9MJ4TLZIa7xKRZQCPcB/s1600/PB112465.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FxW02Hc4sLM/UVmUskoENeI/AAAAAAAABtA/hF9hi85Zp-cl0soMFQ9MJ4TLZIa7xKRZQCPcB/s640/PB112465.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Macaulay Road, Clapham, in autumn. Sometimes it is good just to celebrate the beauty of the place you live in.</td></tr></tbody></table>It's always a joy to have some time - and the necessary drive - to write something for this blog.<br /><br />What's wonderful about writing a blog named Microgroove 33 is that i can write about anything I bloody well like.<br /><br />It doesn't have to be local, it doesn't have to be news, it doesn't have to be about music or art or people or linguistics or bicycles or Penguin Classics or charity shops or architecture &nbsp;or even about London - although those are all things I'd love to be expert enough to write a blog on.<br /><br />It doesn't even have to be about dogs.<br /><br />Like I said, I have been looking back at the blog, and especially at dozens - &nbsp;five dozen in fact - &nbsp;of unpublished entries that are scattered around in the blogger editing and design area, like so many unfinished projects in a bike workshop.<br /><br />I trip over them, frequently - especially two or three unpublished updates to the totally subjective south-west London charity shop survey for bibliophiles first published in 2013.<br /><br />Ever since I have been promising myself to update and extend this series, and have even written new stuff, about the charity shops of Streatham, and Stroud Green, and Kilburn, for example (there are lots, and lots).<br /><br />Recent visits to the Barnado's shop in Brixton confirm and re-confirm my feeling that this would be the number one shop if I were to update that silly top 10. It's solid on my staples - books and music and good old clothes - and it keeps throwing up interesting oddities. This week there's a whole glass case full of vintage cameras, and a whole shelf of cut-price bath products.<br /><br />Not long ago it had a rack-full of over-size string vests - you know, the type some Rastas wore back in the 80s? But these were not just in the Rasta red green and gold, but in the colours of lots of other African flags. Reader I bought one - but no-one outside this blog will ever find out, and no-one will ever see me wearing it either!<br /><br />So, there you go ....maybe one day I will complete some more of these beached, stranded stories.<br /><br />Like the one on the strange increase in people getting caught short and crapping on the streets. Twice within 150 yards of where I am now sitting, in the past two months. I'm talking humans, not dogs. Young humans. I could continue but I will not.<br /><br />Or the story on the mystic Xanadu of Dawson Heights.<br /><br />Some of the articles are no more than a headline that &nbsp;for some reason I liked at the time. In a long career as a mediocre journalist, I remember how every so often a sub would come up with a perfect headline for a story that did not exist, and we'd try to find that story and write it.<br /><br />I also want to write about the beauty of the wisteria in three streets, and the beauty of Californian Lilac in another three; or maybe one just about the beauty of the residential streets of SW8 in spring.<br /><br />I could write a hundred more posts on my curious work pattern, which takes me to Vauxhall, Bermondsey, &nbsp;Camberwell, Dulwich, Forest Hill, New Cross and New Malden on a regular basis, sometimes in the evenings. And once to Stoke-on-Trent.<br /><br />And to converted shops in Angell Town ...<br /><br />I want to write about the writers I love, and about places I love; about bikes and bike shops.<br /><br />But I'm sure I will soon be back to ranting about Range Rovers, posh types and luxury apartments.<br />It's so much easier to write when you're really stirred up with anger!<br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-85419603061682174452017-04-10T04:15:00.000-07:002017-04-10T04:15:24.342-07:00The first warm weekend of the year and look what happens<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hUrB-FatcZc/WOlNez7NIGI/AAAAAAAAHYE/7SyTNwcKNnMASnn-zSV_W_bLPSL5FdPrQCKgB/s1600/IMG_20170408_161533349.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hUrB-FatcZc/WOlNez7NIGI/AAAAAAAAHYE/7SyTNwcKNnMASnn-zSV_W_bLPSL5FdPrQCKgB/s640/IMG_20170408_161533349.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Why is the grass of Clapham Common so green, so lush? Maybe we don't want to know...</td></tr></tbody></table>It's the first really warm weekend of the year, and as always, most of the population of this locality go a bit crazy.<br /><br />By 4pm today, the temperature in this part of south London topped 24 degrees, and as if by some cosmic ordination, everyone of a certain age and social inclination left their homes - their stuffy shared flats or luxury apartments - and went and sat down on the green grass of &nbsp;Clapham Common.<br /><br />So many people went out, it looked like Brighton beach on an unexpectedly hot Bank Holiday.<br /><br />Cycling past on way home , seeing all these happy souls basking in the long-forgotten warmth of London sunshine, it is so easy to be seduced - why not join them for a while, the grass looks so green.<br /><br />Oh, ill-advised one. You weave your way through the little groups of people, you find your patch, you stretch out on the grass, you relax. And then it hits you - a faint but distinctly unpleasant smell, but more than a smell, it is a tang, something almost hormonal. It is also as though your skin is being touched by something bad.<br /><br />You look around. Can't all these people smell this smell? Is it just me? Am I in fact the source of this pong?<br /><br />Then it dawns on me: there has not been any rain for weeks. Not real, heavy rain. The last few days have been warm. But every day, hot or cold, every single day, thousands and thousands of dogs from all the houses in all the vast tracts of residential streets surrounding Clapham Common - yes, all those dogs are taken out, every morning, every afternoon, every evening, to relieve themselves on the<br />grass of the Common.<br /><br />The solid waste from these dogs is usually removed from the Common in small plastic bags. Most of it. But the liquids - these are sprayed onto the grass and the earth, and they stay there. Including the wee of randy male dogs and on-heat bitches.<br /><br />That's the smell we are all enjoying today!<br /><br />The rich, doggy aroma of south west London's biggest free dog toilet.<br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-88292075015273693382017-03-31T09:55:00.001-07:002017-03-31T09:55:43.362-07:00It's not just Nine Elms - even Mecca is suffering at the hands of property developers<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4OW_GgL3MX0/WN6HnuA0ImI/AAAAAAAAHVo/vvsUj2HYEZI2AedHPsX22Sg4Jh64g98qACLcB/s1600/1024px-Mecca%252C_Saudi_Arabic_from_Abraj_Al-Bait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4OW_GgL3MX0/WN6HnuA0ImI/AAAAAAAAHVo/vvsUj2HYEZI2AedHPsX22Sg4Jh64g98qACLcB/s640/1024px-Mecca%252C_Saudi_Arabic_from_Abraj_Al-Bait.jpg" title="By Basil D Soufi (Own work) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the Abraj al Bait tower while it was under construction, looking down into the sanctuary of<br />Mecca's Holy Mosque. Note the areas cleared for more construction in the background. <br />Photo: Basil D Soufi via Wikimedia Commons</td></tr></tbody></table>Unless you are a Muslim, your chances of visiting the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia are approximately zero. But a short film, shown at last week's <a href="https://bbcarabicfestival.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/#/" target="_blank">BBC Arabic Film festival</a>, reveals that even this most sacred of places is being ravaged by property developers - remarkably similar to the ones working their grim way along the south bank of the Thames.<br /><br />What this film, <i>Prayer for Mecca</i>, &nbsp;brings home so sharply is how rampant redevelopment - which has the full support of the government and presumably the religious authorities - has already wiped out parts of the medieval city, and in doing so has also destroyed a slice of communal memory. A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/14/mecca-hajj-pilgrims-tourism" target="_blank">recent Guardian article reports local anger</a> at the way their neighbourhoods are being erased to make way for new roads and hotels.<br /><br />Directed by Matteo Lonardi, the film follows the Saudi artist Ahmed Mater as he attempts to document the rapid change being inflicted on his city. This young man - clearly at some risk to himself - is photographing what he can of the old city, as well as the redevelopment.<br /><br />Much of the film, like the city itself, is dominated by the gargantuan&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraj_Al_Bait">Abraj Al Bait hotel </a>complex, a grouping of massive skyscrapers which loom over the most sacred part of the city, the Masjid al-Haram (Holy Mosque) and its courtyard where millions of pilgrims gather each year, to circle the Kaaba, the most holy cube-shaped shrine at its centre.<br /><br />A famous ancient Ottoman fortress was demolished to make way for these new buildings, which contain shopping malls and office premises as well as ultra-luxurious hotel accomodation, car parks and even helipads.<br /><br />The central tower, with its huge clockfaces and spire, looks a bit like a kitscher version of the already kitsch Big Ben, but for its height - at 601m about seven times as tall - and the crescent moon at the tip. The forest of cranes surrounding the central area is painfully reminiscent of the Battersea to Vauxhall riverside development.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Of course it's the massive increase in numbers of pilgrims which provides the main justification for this redevelopment, along with some tragic incidents when the old city's infrastructure could not cope with the crowds.<br /><br /></div><div>But it's the brashness and show-off style of these buildings that is upsetting for some locals, according to Ahmed, who notes that they seem entirely at odds with the spiritual nature of the place. Apparently there's even a Starbucks in there somewhere. The minarets of the great mosque are dwarfed, and the new sykscrapers throw deep shadows across the courtyard.<br /><br />The area where he grew up - an old quarter, with a maze of narrow alleyways - has been bulldozed.<br /><br />Makes you wonder what Canterbury might look like if they had 14 million pilgrim-visitors going there for the same week every year....<br /><br /><br /></div>Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-30395744138340163102017-03-30T06:05:00.001-07:002017-04-02T09:11:22.468-07:00Photographer gets under the skin of Clapham High Street's Jekyll and Hyde character<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KXuOY4XA20E/WN0746ogKTI/AAAAAAAAHVY/imb3psGL1so_Ue6n7x8LUb0hmLCX52I4wCLcB/s1600/CHS2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KXuOY4XA20E/WN0746ogKTI/AAAAAAAAHVY/imb3psGL1so_Ue6n7x8LUb0hmLCX52I4wCLcB/s640/CHS2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This uninspiring photo of Clapham High Street is by me: to see this much-maligned thoroughfare in a totally different and much more interesting light, check out Jim Grover's photos on the BBC Online site or better still get along to his exhib-<br />ition at the Omnibus Arts Centre in Clapham, April 3 - 20</td></tr></tbody></table>Thanks to photographer <a href="http://www.jimgroverphotography.com/" target="_blank">Jim Grover</a>, the south London Babylon otherwise known as Clapham High Street is being shown to the world in all its glorious ghastliness - and even a bit of unexpected beauty - &nbsp;on the BBC website.<br /><br />&nbsp;Jim Grover's amazing photo essay has been chosen as this week's &nbsp;<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-39405318" target="_blank">BBC Online"Picture This" feature</a>&nbsp; - a few days before the photos go on show locally at &nbsp;<a href="http://omnibus-clapham.org/" target="_blank">Omnibus (the arts centre in the old Clapham Library building on Clapham Common northside)</a>.<br /><br />Jim hit on the brilliant notion of treating his subject, rather like Hieronymous Bosch, in two parts - heaven and hell, and photographing them differently, one in colour, the other black and white. &nbsp; The division is between night and day - cleverly working on the split personality of this singularly unattractive thoroughfare.<br /><br />And he works some real alchemy with his camera: sometimes it looks almost beautiful, sometimes as sordid and threatening as a Mean Streets era New York. The real stars of the show, however, are the people, and thankfully there's hardly an upturned-collar rugger shirt in sight.<br /><br />His daytime shots beautifully capture a suburban world of shoppers, street cleaners, mums, kids, shop keepers, rough sleepers, pensioners, commuters, itinerants; the same old Clapham set. These photos are all in colour, and are all taken on the south side of the street.<br /><br />The nightlife shots are all black and white and are all taken on the north side of the street, focusing on the true inferno of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.infernos.co.uk/" target="_blank">Infernos</a>, the notoriously tacky&nbsp;night-club, and that strip of bars leading down towards Clapham North. You don't get too much sense of the&nbsp;<i>literal</i>&nbsp;tackiness of this street on a busy summer night, when your shoes can stick to a pavement awash with puked-out Baileys, half-digested kebabs and a mixture of human and canine urine.<br /><br />Generally he's very kind to Clapham - he doesn't mock or caricature it, and the yuppie-buppie-yummie-mummy-rugger-bugger set don't get too much of a look-in. They tend not to use the thoroughfare that much anyway, in my experience, sticking mostly to the "Old Town" area of max wealth, the plus Venn Street and the pubs around Clapham Common tube station when there are big matches on.<br /><br />Jim Grover makes gold out of the base metal of this conflicted bit of Lambeth. There are many beautiful photos, even on the BBC site: I am eager to see more at the exhibition. &nbsp;Favourites so far include some of the long-term shopkeepers and some very atmospheric shots of made-up revellers, and of my favourite bit of the street including the old Greek restaurant (Sappho) and that strange mystical charity shop.<br /><br />I'm looking forward to seeing these pics at the Omnibus - especially as I have been trying to do something similar in words for years, and failing.<br /><br />For as long as I can remember the authorities have been trying to clean up and gentrify the high street, to make it more yuppie-friendly. I remember when the Sainsbury's opened on the site of the old bus depot (and later, British Transport museum) - when, for a while, people thought this might be the beginning of an invasion by upmarket retail "brands".<br /><br /><b>Thank God, it never happened!</b><br /><br />Instead it remains as scuzzy as ever, even after the building of that posh new library and health complex with its classy (but vandal-friendly) Andrew Logan artwork spelling out "LIBRARY".<br /><br />As Jim's photo essay confirms, Clapham High Street remains a real Jekyll and Hyde of a street, a bit down at heel during the day, and an all-out alcohol fuelled war-zone every Friday and Saturday night.<br /><br />It's rather quaint and old-fashioned in its way. It has nothing to do with the world of cool, arty nightlife so highly prized in places like Shoreditch and Dalston and Deptford and Peckham. It is totally uncool, unfashionable, and un-smart. And yet it remains incredibly popular, mainly it seems, for the kids from the further-out south west London suburbs. In short, it's a rite of passage place for kids with fake IDs.<br /><br />They come to get hideously drunk in the bars here, they hope to pull, but most seem just to wander up and down in groups, vomiting occasionally, and shouting loudly to each other (I heard one say last week, "Guys, I really have to take a shit right here right now") - before tapping their phones to rustle up some sort of Uber car to take them back to dad's post-divorce black-leather-lined bachelor pad in Putney or Purley.<br /><div><br /></div>But, like so many other of London's suburban high streets, the real boss here is the traffic. Like the A23 through Brixton and Streatham, this is a trunk route, combining both the A24 as well as the A3. It is just too big a road to tame.<br /><br />The pedestrian crossing lights are some of the most ruthless anywhere in London - you get half way across and they start blinking at you. Impatient drivers in their white vans, Audis and Aston Martins - they are &nbsp;all in such a hurry. You run the last yards and off they go, heading perhaps for lovely gated homes in Nappy Valley, or further out, in Surrey and Hampshire. Heading north, they're looking for posher places to spend their bankers' wad of an evening.<br /><br />They don't care that they are on Clapham High Street.<br /><br />But there I go, fantasising again. See the reality of <a href="http://omnibus-clapham.org/event/48-hours-on-clapham-high-street-a-photo-essay/2017-04-28/" target="_blank">48 Hours On Clapham High Street in Jim Grover's great exhibition at the Clapham Omnibus, April 3 - 2</a>0.<br /><br /><br /><div></div><br /><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style="margin: 0px;"><br /></div></div>Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-16589814603084303542017-03-26T06:58:00.002-07:002017-03-26T06:58:15.236-07:00Clapham Library café updateGood news: people are once again allowed to sit in the ground floor café area!<br /><br />Other news, neither good nor bad: the café itself is still not back in business, so you can't buy drinks and snacks, even though the kitchen and all its equipment seems to be intact.<br /><br />Bad news: you still can't use the toilet.<br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-57105858697358569332017-03-21T13:49:00.000-07:002017-03-22T12:42:18.851-07:00Clapham Library's cafe remains closed – pity they didn't take some tips from Southwark<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>It's odd but true that two neighbouring south London boroughs, Lambeth and Southwark, have such different approaches to public libraries, despite having so much else in common.<br /><br />These and several other thoughts emerged as I sat hunched on the terrible little narrow bench that passes for seating in the public library in Clapham High Street.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZlQwHlDtToI/WLxPGvjOfXI/AAAAAAAAHPI/Fbx2R7yH7i0ARtruARrFk2VJqLa0F5aawCKgB/s1600/IMG_20170228_170830864.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZlQwHlDtToI/WLxPGvjOfXI/AAAAAAAAHPI/Fbx2R7yH7i0ARtruARrFk2VJqLa0F5aawCKgB/s400/IMG_20170228_170830864.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clapham Library, half five on a Friday, the café is shut, and no-one can<br />use the seating.&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table>Thought one was: I should sue Lambeth council for doing my back in, as sitting on this bench for 20 minutes trying to find some info had revived long-buried lower back pain.<br /><br />The bench was one of the only vacant seats in the library late on a Friday afternoon.<br /><br />There were lots of empty chairs and tables in the café. But the café is closed. It seems no-one can enter what used to be the biggest seating area at ground level in this strange building, and it also seems that this café - <a href="http://microgroove33.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/clapham-librarys-getting-its-cafe.html" target="_blank">which opened less than a year ago</a> - has already shut down, at least temporarily.<br /><br />No-one could explain why it was closed again last Saturday morning - surely a potential peak time. Have the operators decided to cut their losses? All the equipment is still there. &nbsp;And why on earth can't we use the seats, whether or not it's selling its pricey hot drinks and snacks?<br /><br />Absurd or what?<br /><br />Given that most library users are schoolkids, students, OAPs, or young parents with toddlers attending storytime groups etc, it would seem that the cafe was aiming at the wrong market. The 30-something folk who love to spend their high earnings on small cups of coffee with silly names would not really need to come here - this area is full of twee little coffee shops, not to mention the obligatory Starbucks etc.<br /><br />If the cafe had sold cheap and cheerful coffees, teas, and some simple grub, it might have worked. No item more than £1.<br /><br />Mind you the café was well used, particularly in the exam season when there was really nowhere else to sit and study - but probably most of those customers bought one drink and then stayed the whole morning, revising or whatever.<br /><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W4wJTfg1zaE/WNGPq5luEuI/AAAAAAAAHUQ/ApKyUk-zisAYM7nbo5mQGTc9WHWZS38agCKgB/s1600/IMG_20170318_125227008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W4wJTfg1zaE/WNGPq5luEuI/AAAAAAAAHUQ/ApKyUk-zisAYM7nbo5mQGTc9WHWZS38agCKgB/s400/IMG_20170318_125227008.jpg" width="300" /></a>You couldn't really blame the cafe operators - they probably thought Clapham, that's a wealthy area, let's go for the yuppie market. But the yups ain't there, they're all over the road at Cafe Nero. It was surely the fault of the council for agreeing to let this bit of public space for a private business.<br /><br />They even threw in the toilet as part of the deal - outrageous or what?<br /><br />Well, I'll check out this café again later in the week. Maybe if they have gone the council will be seeking another taker for this space...who knows. Maybe they should offer it to a food bank?<br /><br />But then, this new library building was always a bit compromised. We only got it because they let the developers build that clunky edifice of expensive flats above and around it.<br /><br />This library is rightly popular for its wide range of events and classes, especially for very young kids. The staff are great and someone clearly goes to a lot of trouble to try to maintain an interesting stock of books.<br /><b><i><br /></i></b><b><i>But from the start, it's been clear it's not really a very good space for what should be a core library activity - reading!</i></b><br /><br />Yes there are some "teen" study areas, and a very cramped little general reading area up the top, plus a few small PC rooms. These are nearly always fully occupied. Right at the bottom there are cell-like meeting rooms, which are hidden away; you feel you are not really supposed to be there. The large floor area at the very bottom of the building has several tables and chairs for studying and a couple of sofas - but this is generally considered to be the children's area, and again you feel like you're breaking rules if you go down there to read.<br /><br />In fact as I sat on my tortuous bench, two women with young kids came down the ramp, one saying in a very loud voice, <b><i>"Oh I do hate it when grown-ups sit in the kid's area, it's creepy..."</i></b><br /><br />Well I wasn't in the kid's area but halfway down the ramp. Every so often very young children zoom down the ramp on their scooters. Any moment you expected to hear a thump followed by much wailing. Luckily, no such disaster today.<br /><br />All this made me think again what a wasted opportunity this library was, especially when you compare it with some of the much older libraries Lambeth has been closing or compromising under its heavily criticised scheme.<br /><br />Lambeth only has to look east towards its much more competent neighbouring borough, Southwark, to see how to run libraries.<br /><div><br /></div>I've been working in Borough High Street for a couple of days a week, and have got to know the Harvard Library, close to St Georges Church and the tube station.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-exboE_heMZY/WNGQPn-DviI/AAAAAAAAHUU/E5RfOnJ2wpANB97CUf3NUmZhRaTyIF_wwCKgB/s1600/IMG_20170320_093430660.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-exboE_heMZY/WNGQPn-DviI/AAAAAAAAHUU/E5RfOnJ2wpANB97CUf3NUmZhRaTyIF_wwCKgB/s400/IMG_20170320_093430660.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br />Despite its historic origins, explained on a blue plaque, this famously-named library also now occupies a fairly modern building, quite a bland one compared to the over-designed Clapham project.<br /><br />There's nothing very pretty or exciting about it - it is simply a good, sensible building, which could just as well be offices or shops. But it provides plenty of space for all the activities a modern library has to offer.<br /><br />So, there are lots of computer workstations for schoolkids and students as well as local workers seeking somewhere to wile away their lunch-breaks when it's cold and wet outdoors.<br /><br />There's a kids' area of course. And yes, there is a café. It's right at the front of the library, but unlike the Clapham one it does not usurp any reading space. Anyone can sit in that large area, where they have sensibly located the magazine and newspaper racks. Anyone can stay there all day reading and not buy a single coffee.<br /><br />But every time I've been in there, the café has been busy. It's a lunch destination for local workers, an after work place to relax for a while before meeting up with friends. And a wonderful sanctuary for all the drifters, the lonely, the homeless, the old, freezing construction workers, the young, tired tourists, whoever happens to pass.<br /><br />That's what a public library should be! And by the way, they had two different complete translations of Proust on the shelves, &nbsp;and their CD loan collections were amazing - 40p for a week's loan.<br /><br />Talk about grass being greener over the administrative boundary fence.<br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-37436377469129492382017-03-10T02:30:00.001-08:002017-05-12T12:34:31.017-07:00Oi, you! Property developers and your ilk - can we have our words back, please?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1_Sk_K2zjYU/WMBWcg2x3XI/AAAAAAAAHQI/lVRW2QUcLf0buGPU2lLNz1tz-FA7mXl0QCKgB/s1600/IMG_20160430_133625584.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="418" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1_Sk_K2zjYU/WMBWcg2x3XI/AAAAAAAAHQI/lVRW2QUcLf0buGPU2lLNz1tz-FA7mXl0QCKgB/s640/IMG_20160430_133625584.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I can think of a fourth two-word phrase ending in "OFF" which might be the best response to these corporate language thieves, seen not long ago outside the former IPC building in Stamford Street, not far from Blackfriars Bridge</td></tr></tbody></table>First they take your words, then they take your city.<br /><br />This seems to be part of the strategy of the corporate property developers who are gobbling up huge areas of what used to be a fairly open city. They grab the land, then they put up big fences. Then they write big friendly lovely words all over these fences to make you think they are wonderful people!<br /><br />But even as they decorate the barriers - sometimes employing very skilled artists and copywriters to do it - behind the hoardings, they are busily privatising and colonising not only the land but also the sky above it.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AdIGbP0_0M4/WMBgAFCRmxI/AAAAAAAAHQY/ZrHWD9foY4Mw2bHJs8ybm3jcvXN-oQR6gCLcB/s1600/words1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AdIGbP0_0M4/WMBgAFCRmxI/AAAAAAAAHQY/ZrHWD9foY4Mw2bHJs8ybm3jcvXN-oQR6gCLcB/s400/words1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, that's right: we must indeed be innovative, and highly collaborative. <br />Thanks for the advice, Battersea Power Station Development people!</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Watch out for these smug and vacuous phrases that are being painted in tasteful colours and elegant fonts on hoardings all around us, as if the words actually bring the ideas into existence!<br /><br />I mean, seriously, what the hell has Rachmaninoff and Blue Note got to do with a massive block of luxury apartments that has taken over what used to be IPC Magazines HQ in Stamford Street, near Blackfriars Bridge?<br /><br />Yeah, what? As though by putting the words close to each other the goodness of the first two will somehow rub off onto the badness I at least associate with the others, such as "target market" and "luxury apartments".<br /><br />Look at those words above written on the miles of fence on Nine Elms Lane; "innovative", "collaborative" ....oh, yes, of course.<br /><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jUlaBXc4QWA/WMJwRjJtXhI/AAAAAAAAHRA/F_RiG_MAoYUp96J7CnuqajgXycs8rHa0gCLcB/s1600/words5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jUlaBXc4QWA/WMJwRjJtXhI/AAAAAAAAHRA/F_RiG_MAoYUp96J7CnuqajgXycs8rHa0gCLcB/s320/words5.jpg" width="320" /></a>OK, so the blame for this sort of nonsense cannot all be laid at the feet of estate agents. It started, as so much else rotten did, in the advertising industry and was then picked up by marketing and "brand" executives, especially in the 80s.<br /><br />Remember the time when perfectly sensible company names were changed to vague, often made-up words, such as "Aviva" or &nbsp;the Post Office's temporary pseudonym, "Consignia"? Or when the Philip Morris tobacco firm became "Altria?" (For other horrors of this nature, <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1914815_1914808_1914773,00.html" target="_blank">read this great article in Time Magazine</a>).<br /><br />In the late 90s, under the shining eyes of Mr Blair, this trend moved into the public sector, and suddenly schools around the land were changing their names and adopting gormless or worthy slogans instead of homely Latin mottos: "Excellence for all" was a favourite; "Embracing diversity" - yes, a great thing, but are you really doing it? "Integrity, Diligence, Civility" - yes, all of those please!<br /><br />No doubt it's good to have lofty ambitions: you just wonder sometimes if those schools with their flashy new buildings and lurid new uniforms can live up to the hype of their marketing.<br /><br />Politicians have always loved dreadful slogans, but even the least offensive of these optimistic phrases can turn your stomach when they are over-used. A case in point at a recent London Mayoral event. while the crowd waited patiently for the arrival of delayed Mayor Khan, they played a short marketing video about London at least 20 times. The theme, "London is open" in a whole range of carefully chosen accents, thus embracing diversity as well. The trouble is by the 12th or 13th hearing of someone like the ubiquitous Jarvis Cocker mumbling "London is open" you begin to question those words. Is it really open? To whom? People with enough money? Clever buggers only?<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ETLNEbqMatU/WMJwRlo_AXI/AAAAAAAAHQ8/i6pE289EugYaAwbsJxrtYasaCu_Ug6x3ACLcB/s1600/words6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ETLNEbqMatU/WMJwRlo_AXI/AAAAAAAAHQ8/i6pE289EugYaAwbsJxrtYasaCu_Ug6x3ACLcB/s320/words6.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No, actually you are NOT improving the image of construction,<br />not even slightly. And yes I do mind if you don't smoke.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Which brings us back to property developers and that annoying phrase you see on building sites everywhere: "Improving the image of construction".<br /><br />Oh yeah? Whenever I see that I think, "Oh no you're not". If you think the way you're building that horrible pile of expensive flats that no-one living around here can hope to afford is in some way an improvement on the people who built St Paul's Cathedral, then you should think again.<br /><br />Maybe we should have some new by-laws about words on hoardings. Maybe like fag packets they should be forced to print some home truths, some "health warnings" in equally trendy fonts.<br /><br />Something like this, perhaps:<br /><br /><i>"Buying a flat in this development will not only bankrupt you it will also make you the laughing stock of all your even richer friends and the enemy of everyone living in the estate over the road".</i><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-53737249281188442772017-02-12T03:21:00.002-08:002017-02-12T16:08:01.499-08:00Sneak preview of Battersea-Nine Elms "village" life as river frontage opens to public<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XG87G0s9YME/WJ3mfHcG_KI/AAAAAAAAHJI/yf8JXqhJCgcaN_AbUJ0ZNWPwW34qOYTPgCLcB/s1600/village1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XG87G0s9YME/WJ3mfHcG_KI/AAAAAAAAHJI/yf8JXqhJCgcaN_AbUJ0ZNWPwW34qOYTPgCLcB/s400/village1.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>Good news (or so it seemed) last week, to hear that the river frontage by Battersea Power Station was open to the public for the first time since that brief glimpse we had back in 2013 (when there was a sort of alternative Chelsea Flower Show staged on the land about to be transformed into luxury flats).<br /><br />So on Sunday, after a happy hour or two in Battersea Park, including a visit to the <a href="http://pumphousegallery.org.uk/" target="_blank">Pump House Gallery</a> (re-opened after being flooded in January) I thought I'd check it out.<br /><br />It's good that you can get from the park to the new bit without having to cross Queenstown Road, via a walkway under the first span of Chelsea Bridge.<br /><br />So you walk under the road, and emerge in front of those lumpy flats which went up in the 1990s and now seem rather jaded, set as they are against a backdrop of the splendours oF Battersea - Nine Elms extravagance. &nbsp;So now, you can walk on, until you get to the wide Grosvenor railway bridge carrying all the Southern rail lines into Victoria Station over the river.<br /><br />This bit of the walkway has been transformed using lots of Scandinavian-look timber. It's all very nicely-built. There's a new Santander bike rack and large timber-framed exhibition room, plus several shop/bar/restaurant and kiosk spaces. And lots of festive lightbulbs. Just round the corner it leads to what they are calling a "village hall" for the first of the new residential areas ("Quarters" I mean) &nbsp;at this end of the massive <a href="http://nineelmslondon.com/" target="_blank">Battersea-Nine Elms development</a>.<br /><br />With people supposed to be moving into the first flats very soon, this bit - Circus West Village - is a sort of sneak preview of what this vast development might feel like. I never did find the idea of London's urban villages very convincing or &nbsp;attractive, and to describe this encampment for multi-millionaires a village is stretching the concept a bit, isn't it?<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XZs9TW7RYeQ/WJ3nMLBmY4I/AAAAAAAAHJQ/9ZDG6dIOmS49G1YSKr2SPwpg1nNDBGbCwCKgB/s1600/IMG_20170205_152049941.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XZs9TW7RYeQ/WJ3nMLBmY4I/AAAAAAAAHJQ/9ZDG6dIOmS49G1YSKr2SPwpg1nNDBGbCwCKgB/s400/IMG_20170205_152049941.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The folksy map shows some of the first occupants of the retail and restaurant <br />spaces: looks like you won't have to far for a cocktail or an artisanal toasted<br />sandwich with a cold-pressed flat white, if that's your thing...</td></tr></tbody></table><br />On this day, it felt a bit odd, a bit sad, a bit of everything really. Smartly dressed security guys clutched walkie-talkie phones and did their best to smile at the occasional pedestrian or cyclist visitors, the inquisitive passers-by and lost joggers.<br /><br />Not sure how many serious potential buyers there were there.<br /><br />The new residential buildings are very showy, very smart and cold.<br />There's one clad entirely in copper sheeting, another a great glass snake that follows the railway line, said by the developer to be as long as the Shard is tall.<br /><br />One of the rooms under the bridge is hosting a display about the development. It includes one of those wonderful old wooden models of Battersea Power Station as it was in 1935, complete with neatly stacked piles of coal by the quayside.<br /><br />This room contains big panels of texts and diagrams informing us of what to expect. Not too many surprises. The developer is making &nbsp;efforts to win over the more influential local residents. For example there will a programme of free cultural events over the summer, involving among others, <a href="https://www.bac.org.uk/" target="_blank">Battersea Arts Centre</a>. Which is a good sign, isn't it?<br /><br />The "village hall", which is being built under one of the massive arches, will include a large performance area.<br /><br />Then there will of course be shops, bars, restaurants galore. Not - we are promised - from the big international chains. Oh no. But neither, judging from the descriptions given here, will they be terribly affordable to the passing public. Well, at least not to the old menaces like me who like to float around with a Sainsburys bag usually containing a couple of charity-shop bargain books and a camera or two.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zxoSowXtXWA/WJ3mWIIyOLI/AAAAAAAAHJE/T3nkrYgBoQgg84KhWgg2a0z7hhvJcPaJwCLcB/s1600/vill3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zxoSowXtXWA/WJ3mWIIyOLI/AAAAAAAAHJE/T3nkrYgBoQgg84KhWgg2a0z7hhvJcPaJwCLcB/s400/vill3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view east: any resemblance to San Gimignano or Trebizond is entirely<br />a figment of this author's fevered imagination.</td></tr></tbody></table>It should have been great to see what's left of the power station close up again. Of course it never fails to take your breath away - even now. And the scale of the whole redevelopment is also breathtaking, if in a rather different way.<br /><br />But, seeing the stumps of the chimneys and the non-existent walls and roof of the main hall was also like walking into an operating theatre and seeing an old friend all opened up and bloody on the table.<br /><br />You just know that when it's finished it will be all scrubbed up and lovely, like a CGI image in a Hollywood movie. It will be hard to tell which are the new bits and which the original. And, it won't matter. Will it.<br /><br />They've built a neat little viewing platform so you can gaze across the whole development towards Vauxhall.<br /><br />The new concrete cores of high rise towers, the lift and service shafts, stick out of the churned up soil of Nine Elms. On some they've painted the number of each floor in case they forget where to stop.<br /><br />&nbsp;If you screw your eyes up you could almost be looking at the medieval towers of <a href="http://www.sangimignano.com/en/" target="_blank">San Gimignano in Tuscany</a>. They were built by wealthy barons, initially to defend themselves, but really to show off their wealth and outdo their neighbours in a macho, phallic display. So what changes?<br /><br />Well, at least those medieval barons didn't drive SUVs.Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-31858328314321083402017-02-10T04:58:00.002-08:002017-02-19T03:09:58.638-08:00Two more art enterprises fall victim to London's property vulturesIt's hardly news that London's rapacious property developers are driving anyone who's not rich out of newly-fashionable areas. Among the victims are artists, who are being pushed out of their studios and work-spaces. It's a cliché (and therefore true?) that struggling artists, musicians and their ilk, who always tended to migrate to areas with cheap, large work-spaces, helped to make those areas fashionable and desirable. And then these very people who made the area popular get driven away as rents soar and the bankers, advertising execs and the hedge fund mob move in.<br /><br />Any hopes that this dismal trend was slowing down have been dashed. It's only February and already, two very different artist-led enterprises in south London have been given notice to vacate their premises, both in once-despised areas that have recently become highly desirable: Vauxhall and New Cross Gate.<br /><br />These are just two examples that I happen to know personally. The same thing is happening to dozens of others, typically in the areas which have been made more marketable to city commuters by the arrival of the London Overground.<br /><br />These two places are at different ends of the art world.<br /><br />The first is&nbsp;<a href="http://www.drawpaintsculpt.com/journal-post/lara-needs-you" target="_blank">LARA - the London Atelier of Representational Art </a>- a well-respected independent art school, known for adapting the classical atelier system for teaching the traditional skills of drawing, painting and sculpting the human figure. The tutors are all successful practitioners, and the students learn by example. They spend weeks and months and years learning to use the sight-sizing methods developed by Italian renaissance artists, to build their knowledge of paints and brushes and pigment, canvases, papers, the lot.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MI0bZ50shCM/WKl8FLKb2rI/AAAAAAAAHMc/khSrVKiVJIA48lbgYEiTws9qPWhvvRfPACKgB/s1600/IMG_20170215_171748781.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MI0bZ50shCM/WKl8FLKb2rI/AAAAAAAAHMc/khSrVKiVJIA48lbgYEiTws9qPWhvvRfPACKgB/s400/IMG_20170215_171748781.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who could guess that in the basement area of the buildings to the right,<br />on the&nbsp;busy Vauxhall gyratory system, there's an amazing hive of artistic <br />activity -&nbsp;the London Atelier of Representational Art.</td></tr></tbody></table>It runs full-time diploma courses and a &nbsp;busy schedule of short courses, evening and weekend masterclasses, exhibitions and excursions. It's a hive of intense artistic activity, and at the moment it inhabits the basement of a big old office/warehouse building on an unremarkable part of Vauxhall's one-way traffic system.<br /><br />Recently LARA was given notice that the building they've been in for several years is going to be demolished for re-development later this year. They're going to have to leave by late summer, meaning students on their three-year diploma course could face disruption (although LARA already has its sights on alternative premises).<br /><br />So here's a unique, creative organisation which provides employment for dozens of artists, tutors, models and others, which is at the heart of an international revival of the atelier method, and which has also played a part in the re-energization of this fascinating part of London. So close to the centre, and yet so different. And now of course the money-men have noticed, and the place - which survived so much, including one of the most murderous traffic systems in London - is now being torn apart for the development of high-rise luxury flats and "serviced office accommodation".<br /><br />Ironic that, as a new upmarket <a href="https://newportstreetgallery.com/about" target="_blank">Newport Street gallery</a> owned by Damien Hirst opens in Vauxhall, so the organisations that will create future artists are being pushed out.<br /><br />The second sad story is another hive of creativity: the <a href="http://www.ascstudios.co.uk/studios/" target="_blank">ASC Studios in Bond House</a>, Goodwood Road, New Cross Gate. This big old former factory, just round the corner from the railway station, &nbsp;currently hosts over 100 artists' studios of varying shapes and sizes as well as exhibition spaces.<br /><br />Amongst them are a celebrated community project, <a href="https://thegatedarkroom.wordpress.com/about/" target="_blank">The Gate Darkroom,</a> which started in 2011 and provides &nbsp;studio, developing and printing facilities for hundreds of photographers, students and other artists.<br /><br />These studios are just over the road from Goldsmiths; they are part of that incredible ecosystem of creative talent that's existed in this corner of south east London for decades, and which every so often erupts into international notice, as with Hirst and Co back in the 90s.<br /><br />There's no doubt that proerty people - estate agents, the lot - owe a huge debt to these artists, students, the punks and poets and actors and activists who have between them, over decades, &nbsp;created a unique atmosphere in the Deptford - New Cross - Peckham - Camberwell valley. That's one of the reasons this area is now so sought-after.<br /><br />But alas the area is also succumbing to the Overground effect. Wherever this extremely useful railway lines goes, it carries a parasitic virus with it: the dreaded virus, <i>Luxuriosa domos.&nbsp;</i>The Overground trains arrive, then sure enough, along come outbreaks of "New-London-vernacular" flats, which pop up like a bad case of measles alongside the stations.<br /><br />No doubt Bond House will go the same way, soon after the artists are kicked out on March 26. There's already a crop of them just round the corner.<br /><br />ASC is one of several organisations that exist to secure affordable spaces for artists and craftspeople of all types, all ages, all nationalities. But no-one is immune to the squeeze: and there is no government or even local London legislation to ring-fence certain types of property, apart from the listing system for buildings "<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19.2px;">of special architectural or historic interest considered to be of national importance and therefore worth protecting".</span><br /><br />Perhaps they could add: "and cultural, educational or local community" interest to those, as well as building up a strong "continued public access and purpose of use" to this admitrable system. &nbsp; This is what should be happening NOW!<br /><br />Or maybe legislation that forces developers to provide alternative, equally well-positioned accommodation to any of the above that they displace, and that that should only happen with full agreement on all sides - current occupiers, other local businesses and residents.<br /><br />But this is pipe-dream stuff in the world of Theresa May and co.<br /><br />In both the cases I cite above, hard-working dedicated artists and students will have their long-term plans disrupted, even wrecked by the impatient greed of property people - these ones who are perhaps trying to squeeze the last millions out of the London property market before it goes pop when all the money men leave for Paris.<br /><br />Then maybe the cycle will start again. Meantimes there's only one sane response for those with the strength and energy to do it: Squat!<br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-82453135129543308792017-02-04T12:28:00.002-08:002017-02-04T13:03:13.328-08:00New US Embassy in Nine Elms nears completion: but will it be blingy enough for Trump's lot?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DFJpg2_tqlo/WJHvYbttazI/AAAAAAAAHFg/BKgvQFgu9t08foCgX5jKZIdkU9sjWxCawCLcB/s1600/USembassy1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="492" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DFJpg2_tqlo/WJHvYbttazI/AAAAAAAAHFg/BKgvQFgu9t08foCgX5jKZIdkU9sjWxCawCLcB/s640/USembassy1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Well, this is it - the shiny <a href="https://uk.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/new-embassy/" target="_blank">new US Embassy building</a> in the Battersea-Nine Elms-Vauxhall property developers' sand-pit seems to be nearing completion.<br /><br />Reports suggest the move from Grosvenor Square to the new site south of the river will happen in 2017 - and already you can imagine that the new president and his minions will be having mixed feelings about the shift, not to mention many of his London-based officials who are actually going to have to work south of the river.<br /><br />Unsurprisingly they will not include ex-pres Obama's choice, Matthew Barzun, who resigned in January. The job of representing Trump's admin in the UK will fall to a new, much older face. The 45th president has named fellow billionaire Woody Johnson, the 69-year-old sports fanatic, owner of the New York Jets NFL team, and heir of the baby-powder and pharma products firm Johnson &amp; Johnson as his man in London.<br /><br />Of course, this very rich man will not actually live here - he will have the super posh Winfield House in Regent's Park for his private life and his parties, and no doubt he could buy somewhere even grander if this did not suit him. Winfield House, by the way, is named after the founder of Woolworth's. It was owned by Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton in the 1930s, and she gave it to the US government.<br /><br />But what about Nine Elms? Well, the Americans are getting a big, super-safe, new building surrounded by lots of other big and blingy buildings. But the postcode - oh my dear, SW8!<br /><br />The photo above shows the semi-translucent cladding that is going to cloak three sides of the cuboid structure. At first sight it looks like the sort of cheap and cheerful tie-on decorative facades favoured by some of the downmarket shops on Oxford Street. It looks temporary, like a strong gust of wind could send it flying.<br /><br />But according to the architects this stuff performs vital functions in keeping the building cool and shaded in the summer, and also in deflecting the downdrafts of wind that can make life for pedestrians so bad. And the translucency is also meant to symbolise a transparency of government - apparently!<br /><br />The architects,&nbsp;<a href="http://kierantimberlake.com/" target="_blank">KieranTimberlake of Philadelphia</a>, also wanted to&nbsp;avoid the fortress-like designs of many other US embassies: not sure if the big watery moat-like pond at the front of the building does much for that ambition. In fact the old embassy in Grosvenor Square was a very smart 60s building - have you ever seen so many windows in one facade? ANd all those rising bollards and so on only went in after 9/11. The old Grosvenor Square made a convenient rallying place for demos: the bleak wasteland of Nine Elms Lane is a much less attractive prospect for all, whether lovers or haters of the new regime.<br /><br />However, it is no longer the 60s: you imagine Trump might quite the break from this Kennedy-era extravagance. The new Embassy, inits value-for-money postcode, &nbsp;is said to be one of the most environmentally-friendly embassies ever built. OK that's not the sort of claim that's going to impress the new boss, who doesn't care two hoots about the environment. He'll like the fact that it's cheap to run, but you wonder whether he wouldn't rather stay in Mayfair, protected by huge bollards and close to the gold-plated denizens of the Dorchester and the Hilton and the high-end nightclubs of Shepherd Market.<br /><br />Well, the old embassy - a 1960 building designed by Finnish American architect&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_Saarinen">Eero Saarinen</a>&nbsp;–&nbsp;is going to be turned into a luxury hotel, so he could always hang out there anyway. Or he could just commandeer the Regent's Park house. There's room for two or three couples there, it seems.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the staff of the new embassy will have plenty to explore in their lunch breaks and their after-work bonding sessions. There's the famously intense nightlife of Vauxhall itself, for example, plus some lovely (relatively) cheap eating places on Kennington Lane and Wandsworth Road. Maybe the secret gardens and lovely café of Bonnington Square will not be to every G-Man's taste - but of course it's about midway between the US Embassy and MI6, so they could arrange little meetings there.<br /><br />In the summer a short walk or official car ride will take them to Battersea Park, one of south-west London's most beautiful open spaces. And already they have their very own Waitrose right on the doorstep.<br /><br />But perhaps these dear Embassy folk will be discouraged from leaving their workplace, and will be kept happy in their sealed environment with Google HQ-style distractions. You know, non-stop free smoothies, a model railway to deliver authentic American burgers and/or sushimi to every work station, bean-bag-filled breakout areas, pool tables, Coke-fountains, wii screens, etc....and a pool of scooters on which to whizz around their new glassy home.<br /><br />There's talk of a new pedestrian bridge, but where will that take them? Dolphin Square in Pimlico, approximately. Another place favoured by spies, apparently.<br /><br />Talking of spies, if I had a high-powered telephoto lens I could spy on this new building all day and all night. Its massive bulk has blocked what used to be rather a pleasant distant view of Westminster's Victoria Tower from my bedroom window.<br /><br />Dammit!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-91400400590754957502017-01-25T15:59:00.001-08:002017-01-27T07:42:23.274-08:00Something strange is happening on the Wandsworth Road<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YJzYh9NZ-fM/WIevFjlQkQI/AAAAAAAAHEU/R7WiZXreaeAUN9KtsfX4rSUs84epgGAfgCKgB/s1600/IMG_20170114_100555707.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YJzYh9NZ-fM/WIevFjlQkQI/AAAAAAAAHEU/R7WiZXreaeAUN9KtsfX4rSUs84epgGAfgCKgB/s640/IMG_20170114_100555707.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trying but failing to hide itself behind the quirky 1900s facade, the boxy bulk of a new Premier Inn looms over the southern end of fast-changing Wandsworth Road.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Do you remember that scene in the original Alien when the vile creature burst out of John Hurt's chest? Pretty damned unpleasant. Now something very similar has happened at the Battersea end of the Wandsworth Road, where a strange old 1909 building seems to have been harbouring the sperm of a terrible 21st century parasite - and now it has erupted all over the skyline!<br /><br />A couple of years ago I wrote about the <a href="http://microgroove33.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/bingo-another-slice-of-wandsworth-roads.html" target="_blank">beginning of the demolition of the old Rileys Snooker Hall,</a> which was one of the strangest and most abused buildings down this (Queenstown Road) end of my local arterial route. A little research revealed that this was a historically significant building, completed in 1909 &nbsp;- one of 17 Temperance Billiard Halls built in South London &nbsp;in the 1900-1910 period, all designed by the architect Norman Evans.<br /><br />The idea, which began in the teetotal heartlands of England's non-conformist north-west, was to create big, attractive social centres that could lure working men away from the pubs and bars and gin palaces. Inside they got most of the entertainments of a pub, but without the alcohol. Ironic, looking at the building's subsequent history, but still.<br /><br />Eventually they destroyed the entire, massive complex of old billiard halls, meeting rooms, a lounge bar and a later attachment of a pub/nightclub (anyone remember Inigo's? Often had some of the biggest bouncers I've ever seen, hanging around outside).<br /><br />Over the course of the year, they destroyed the whole place - <i>except</i> for Norman Evans' distinctive ornate, mock-oriental facade, which was (as is the current way) kept up on a matrix of props and jacks and scaffolds. Then the building work began in earnest; the whole place was shrouded in green plastic netting, there was even more congestion at the always bad Queenstown Road junction, and a crane was erected.<br /><br />It was widely rumoured that the budget hotel chain Premier Inn was building its latest branch right here on Wandsworth Road, but it seemed hard to believe. Why here? What's there to tempt tourists or even businessmen to this strange, forgotten bit of South west London that doesn't even know if it's Clapham, or Battersea, Nine Elms or what. It more or less straddles the border of the boroughs of Lambeth and Wandsworth, and is a good 15 minute walk to the nearest underground station (Clapham Common, or 10 minutes to an overground rail station (Wandsworth Road).<br /><br />So we sort of forgot about it. Then one day &nbsp;back in December, you look up and see this great bulky six-storey building looming over the old Temperance hall frontage, now tarted up of course. There are big hoardings up at street level still, but they are painted in those distinctive Premier Inn colours.<br /><br />And, after Christmas, the final wrappers come off, and out pops - not a nasty, sharp-fanged space monster, but &nbsp;a brand new&nbsp;<a href="http://www.premierinn.com/gb/en/hotels/england/greater-london/london/london-clapham.html" target="_blank">Premier Inn</a>. As you can see in the pic above, the clash of styles between the flamboyant, almost Disneyland look of the old Temperance Hall and the boxy industrial estate chic of the human storage facility behind it could not be greater.<br /><br />And, on the <a href="http://www.premierinn.com/gb/en/hotels/england/greater-london/london/london-clapham.html">Premier Inn websit</a>e, you'll find an entry for their new hotel "opening soon" in Clapham: a "leafy green oasis in the heart of lively South London"<span style="color: #3f1b48; font-family: 'gill sans light', arial, verdana, 'trebuchet ms'; font-size: 1.375rem; line-height: 1.09091; text-align: center;">.</span><br /><span style="color: #3f1b48; font-family: &quot;gill sans light&quot; , &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;verdana&quot; , &quot;trebuchet ms&quot;; font-size: 1.375rem; line-height: 1.09091; text-align: center;"><br /></span>You can find out exactly how this bulky addition to poor old Wandsworth Road got planning permission here on the <a href="https://moderngov.lambeth.gov.uk/documents/s64069/08%20638-640%20Wandsworth%20Road.pdf" target="_blank">London Borough of Lambeth planning</a> site. It's a long and interesting document; some of the objections to this plan are swiftly dismissed. Now we see the reality, we must wonder if our planners had a very clear view of what was being proposed.<br /><br />Then again, compared with the glass, steel, concrete, gold, marble and bronze nightmare that is being acted out down the road at Nine Elms, you have to admit this is very small beer. It could have been so much worse.<br /><br />You still have to wonder who will stay there. &nbsp;I can't imagine the Clapham High Street weekend ravers will find it much use - a long stagger across the common in that state? Besides, they now have a night tube to get them back home.<br /><br />Meanwhile, now that it has gone, more or less, it's great to read a good architectural history, and&nbsp;<a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1392397" target="_blank">Historic England's account of the Temperance Hall movement</a>&nbsp;is an excellent record.<br /><br />It includes some great observations, eg:&nbsp;<i>"The buildings often used the same decorative materials that pubs used, such as tiled facades and stained glass windows, to create the congenial atmosphere of a public house without the pitfalls of available alcohol.&nbsp;</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>"The Temperance Billiard Company Ltd targeted the suburbs of south London, where many new pubs had been built in the late C19, as well as in the north-west of England where the firm originated. Thus, temperance billiard halls by the company are a distinctively south London and north-west England building type, although there are other temperance buildings elsewhere."</i><br /><i><br /></i>There are in fact several other Temperance Halls in this area - one on Battersea Rise, a smaller version of the same building, is now a pub (the Goat). And at Clapham High Street, there's a different, later design, but with the same distinctive tiles and turrets, now the offices of an architect.<br /><br />Perhaps the best example is in Lewisham, and <a href="http://thetabandcommunity.org/" target="_blank">this building is covered in great detail here</a>.<br /><br />Meanwhile, poor old Wandsworth Road continues to carry its bus, car &nbsp;and lorry loads into and out of the city centre, while the residents of the three big and many smaller council estates along its route continue to attempt to make ends meet in the shops, pubs, cafes, bookies, parks, gyms, colleges and charity shops of that long central swathe of the road that is still pretty much unchanged.<br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: &quot;source sans pro&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0.5px; line-height: 27px;"></span>This road has long had a truly shabby charm all of its own. Over the past three decades, as surrounding areas gentirifed, it remained a bastion of the old, scruffy south London, with car breakers' yards, junk shops, scary boozers,<br /><br />Now, at the Northern end it has been totally transformed by the Nine Elms development. Sainsburys, Tesco and now Premier Inn at the other end signal the beginnings of an inevitable change, which will surely accelerate as money from the Nine Elms development washes up this way.<br /><br />Yes, look out, it's coming. They are nibbling away at both ends: watch out!<br /><div><br /></div>Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-85628593019305274482017-01-17T13:03:00.000-08:002017-02-22T05:20:49.212-08:00Bottom gear, Ep.2: How come these bloated SUVs don't get parking tickets?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JhcAB5iCmC0/WH5xpTDQnCI/AAAAAAAAHBQ/R0GhmdvgLVM4qgM5aauQU5zpKj8v3n0GACLcB/s1600/SUV4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="470" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JhcAB5iCmC0/WH5xpTDQnCI/AAAAAAAAHBQ/R0GhmdvgLVM4qgM5aauQU5zpKj8v3n0GACLcB/s640/SUV4.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Face to face: a 20th century car meets an enormous and very shiny van, also known as an SUV, in a street in Brixton. Note<br />how about a foot of the Audi oozes over the white lines of the parking bay. How come this is allowed?</td></tr></tbody></table>Years ago I was mortified to find a yellow envelope stuck on the windscreen of my decrepit Renault, which I had left, a week earlier, in a residents' parking bay near my flat, one I paid £140 a year to use.<br /><br />It turned out that the back wheels were more outside the white line than in it, an inexcusable bit of &nbsp;sloppy parking. I paid up, and tried to forget it. But these days it seems cars can park with much more of their body mass outside the lines, with impunity.<br /><br />If you drive or cycle, walk, run or even skate around London's inner suburban streets you'll have noticed that the bit between the parked cars on each side is getting narrower and narrower, as the cars themselves get wider.<br /><br />It becomes a dreadful farce trying to drive or cycle down these streets. Lots of flashing of headlamps, a quick dash to the next space, letting or not letting the other driver through, wondering if that white van is really going to keep coming on at that speed. And whether there's a space enough for your narrow handlebars between the wing-mirrors of the SUVs and the sharp front end of the fast-approaching Porsche 911.<br /><br />What I am really moaning about today, in this second episode of a long-term, lonely, hypocritical and very personal war against cars (see <a href="http://microgroove33.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/a-pox-on-your-blaring-horns.html" target="_blank">Episode 1 about hooters here</a>), is the width of some of the things that are now sold as private conveyances, rather than HGVs.<br /><br />If you are stupid enough (as I am) to live in a wealthy zone 2 suburb you will know that the majority of vehicles parked outside those humble £2.5million workers' cottages are whacking great wagons. They're called SUVs, and they are made by many different firms, but under their flashy skins they are all much the same, and most of them are obese. &nbsp;The angry, aggressive styling which their buyers seem to crave often makes them look even bigger than they are: some resemble children's inflatable toys that have been pumped up to the point where they are in danger of bursting.<br /><br />These vehicles are indeed big - &nbsp;most of them are over 2 metres wide - that is, nearly 25 per cent wider than a 1970s Renault 5. &nbsp;That's 20cm wider than the national minimum width for parking bays. Why, you might ask, didn't the manufacturers check this out before selling these monsters in the UK? Surely it's easier and cheaper to slightly re-design a vehicle than to widen all of the nation's streets. You get the feeling such vehicles are designed for the US market where there are wider roads, wider bottoms and fewer pedestrians. Or for the Gulf States, where there are lots of sand dunes. Or of course for Clarksonshire or whatever they call the Cotswolds these days, where most of these elephantine carriages will be parked on a private crunchy gravel drive.<br /><br />No-one would mind much if they were genuine utility vehicles, like ambulances or delivery vans. No, they are "sports" utility vehicles. It's the sporty bit that rankles, along with their flashy styling and often thuggish aspect. Plus the sad fact that their owners usually have nothing more than a few bags of Waitrose shopping in there. And they seem to think it's OK to just stop outside their houses, and not to attempt parking manoeuvres of any sort.<br /><br />Disagree? Just look at some of these monsters:<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qJrfxHmxvdA/WH52GqHX_kI/AAAAAAAAHBc/on8Hnc5sRRcxIrFvm4Az3FRCc0tM09bsgCLcB/s1600/SUV1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="432" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qJrfxHmxvdA/WH52GqHX_kI/AAAAAAAAHBc/on8Hnc5sRRcxIrFvm4Az3FRCc0tM09bsgCLcB/s640/SUV1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the worst offenders. This BMW XL5 (named after one of the Thunderbirds) is about two feet over the line. It<br />was there in a Clapham street for days and didn't get a ticket!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lR5E8GSZik8/WH52Li6xwpI/AAAAAAAAHBg/7GXgqLymlOAPb43CnFvGur-HMatB2MO2QCLcB/s1600/SUV2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="482" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lR5E8GSZik8/WH52Li6xwpI/AAAAAAAAHBg/7GXgqLymlOAPb43CnFvGur-HMatB2MO2QCLcB/s640/SUV2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another BMW in another Clapham street. This is parked as well as it possibly can be and yet it is still over the white<br />line. Why doesn't the council charge extra for parking these behemoths?</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RKGHGg_OBRY/WH52LtyO3WI/AAAAAAAAHBk/ccE-EasRLYcmZjomeec4UKiPO9qNSYQpwCLcB/s1600/SUV3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="420" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RKGHGg_OBRY/WH52LtyO3WI/AAAAAAAAHBk/ccE-EasRLYcmZjomeec4UKiPO9qNSYQpwCLcB/s640/SUV3.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sometimes it's not just the width of the SUV, but the fact their sheer size makes them difficult to park accurately up against<br />the kerb. Or maybe the drivers are just as arrogant as their cars look.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FPyd3KUFyLk/WH52LsEStkI/AAAAAAAAHBo/yt3ZSFHYdroE9ZAzhg26Bgaiqu3uTSVXQCLcB/s1600/suv5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="516" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FPyd3KUFyLk/WH52LsEStkI/AAAAAAAAHBo/yt3ZSFHYdroE9ZAzhg26Bgaiqu3uTSVXQCLcB/s640/suv5.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, the original SUV - Range Rover was the first, and is still the worst of this baleful species of suburban battle-wagons.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oUBQ0VbGFps/WH52L5lqtMI/AAAAAAAAHBs/uNqEFTgiRn0wyT1EuOKUp3vgHAuIz0DbwCLcB/s1600/suv6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="505" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oUBQ0VbGFps/WH52L5lqtMI/AAAAAAAAHBs/uNqEFTgiRn0wyT1EuOKUp3vgHAuIz0DbwCLcB/s640/suv6.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fast and bulbous? Typical that Porsche should get onto this fat band-wagon, as though their sports cars were not annoying enough.</td></tr></tbody></table>What is it about these vehicles, why are they so popular, and why do the authorities let them get away with it?<br /><br />The huge popularity must come down to a few basic human weaknesses:<br /><br />A) As humans get richer they eat more and get fatter, and so have wider bottoms. So they need wider seats to accommodate these bottoms.<br /><br />B) As humans get richer, they also feel more threatened, so they need things that look like military weapons to protect themselves and their families. Hence the popularity of these tank-like vehicles.<br /><br />C) As more humans get richer, fatter and more aggressive they need to express these qualities in ways that differentiate them from their rich, fat, angry, aggressive neighbours. So they compete to get the biggest, widest, loudest, angriest, most fuck-you car.<br /><br />That's all obvious - but why doesn't our lovely council do something to rein in these very basic human failings?<br /><br />The police stop people doing lots of things in public. Sadly there's not as yet a law to prevent these very rich people, albeit living in the what used to be the modest homes of 19th century&nbsp;clerical and working classes, from splurging their wealth in the faces and eyes and ears of the few remaining members of that older layer of resident.<br /><br />Even when they're young and single and without wide-bottomed offspring in super-wide pavement-clogging buggies, these rich ones often acquire big fat sports cars which are just as wide and difficult to park in south London parking bays as SUVs.<br /><br />God, we have no hope.<br /><br />Parking bays are supposed to be at least 180cm wide from kerb to white line. But to my horror I hear that some councils are thinking of widening bays &nbsp;just because the car industry has decided it can make more money by selling over-wide vehicles.<br /><br />Just read this crazy article in <a href="http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer-news/86193/minimum-parking-bay-size-be-axed-cars-get-too-big" target="_blank">AutoExpress</a>. Oh so it's safety features that account for this shoulder-padded look is it? Safety for whom? Not for me as I try to squeeze my bike past your paddy-wagon with another one approaching fast with its quartz-halogen mainbeams and LED fairy-lights blazing and its super-loud horn inverting eardrums of all in the block.<br /><br />And yet National CAr Parks says it is willingly widening bays to help the drivers of these vehicles. At least half the people interviewed in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38048793" target="_blank">this BBC news item </a>seem to think that's a good thing - all the while people are complaining that our roads are too crowded.<br /><br />A final straw? Yes. Now I understand those kids who go up and down the zone 2 streets with a sharp key in their hand.<br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-81845132868330331342016-12-30T13:20:00.000-08:002017-01-07T05:14:02.709-08:00Thought for 2017: Give us Gagarin rocket apartments and super-tall towers of crystal rather than squat lumps of blandness<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5d94x4tPL3c/WGahcVYcM_I/AAAAAAAAG3Q/ajvIShYD8cEg1C2IVLWpyvqxCFj1KTFLACLcB/s1600/pad-pole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5d94x4tPL3c/WGahcVYcM_I/AAAAAAAAG3Q/ajvIShYD8cEg1C2IVLWpyvqxCFj1KTFLACLcB/s400/pad-pole.jpg" width="255" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">OK so it is a RPBW impression, but you can see<br />how the now abondoned project for a Paddington<br />Skyscraper might have echoed the luminous <br />elegance of the&nbsp;Shard at London Bridge. <br />Photo: Piano</td></tr></tbody></table>Of course as an old buffer I'd rather London looked and felt like it did in 1976: dirty, scruffy, smelly, semi-derelict, cheap.<br /><br />But as that ain't going to happen, I'd rather all the new developments were as interesting and elegant as the recently-dropped proposal for another <a href="http://www.rpbw.com/" target="_blank">Renzo Piano</a> tower, this one at Paddington Station.<br /><br />The so called Paddington Pole was removed from planning consultation by the developers after a well orchestrated protest and a big public outcry. It would have been like a second Shard, in even more stark contrast to its surroundings, and therefore, to my eye, less offensive than what is likely to emerge as the compromise: a massive, but much shorter, "floating cube" that will still jut up into the skyline.<br /><br />This seems to be &nbsp;a continuation of the Prince Charles effect. Get enough posh and influential people to protest and you can batter the planning committees, etc, into submission.<br /><br />Sadly, the result is usually something duller, less brave, and much blander than the original design - eg, &nbsp;the bits around St Pauls, One Poultry, the Sainsbury Wing National Gallery extension (a truly ghastly place which makes visiting this once great gallery a dismal experience); &nbsp;and Chelsea Barracks - where the Prince's view of architecture holds sway. There's a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/10003115.article?WT.tsrc=email&amp;WT.mc_id=Newsletter312&amp;cm_ven=ExactTarget&amp;cm_cat=AJ+Daily+(R)&amp;cm_pla=All+Subscribers&amp;cm_lm=williamhicks@btinternet.com&amp;WT.tsrc=email&amp;WT.mc_id=AJ_Daily-R_Newsletter&amp;&amp;" target="_blank">good piece in AJ</a>&nbsp;explaining precisely this eventuality.<br /><div><br /></div>This is exactly what has emerged at Paddington. Instead of a crazy, slender, sparkling 800 foot pole, this bit of London will g<a href="https://www.dezeen.com/2016/07/18/renzo-piano-paddington-pole-skyscraper-14-storey-cube-london/" target="_blank">et a gigantic glass cube</a>, which looks very much like a big version of everything else built in cities all round the planet in recent years, and actually reminds me of nothing more than the cheap looking new US Embassy in Nine Elms. This 14-storey cube is also designed by Renzo Piano, but as you can tell from the awful green and orange plastic-look slabs near St Giles, he's just as capable of turning out cheap and nasty stuff as the next architect.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xVWPI8obiuY/WGaifm-D9qI/AAAAAAAAG3Y/kOm3QsW7H8kd8k5UWzlyE79LL0MTXQ1RwCLcB/s1600/paddingtoncube.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xVWPI8obiuY/WGaifm-D9qI/AAAAAAAAG3Y/kOm3QsW7H8kd8k5UWzlyE79LL0MTXQ1RwCLcB/s400/paddingtoncube.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here's what we'll get instead: a 14-storey glass and steel cube that looks<br />like something designed for a business park somewhere down the M4...</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Given the lumpen blandness of so much stuff going up now, don't you just long for some crazy, high quality but imaginative buildings, such as the proposed '<a href="http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/8728?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SE1newstwitter+%28SE1+news+for+Twitter%29" target="_blank">Soviet Space Rocket' aka Gagarin Square tower, in Southwar</a>k?<br /><br />This was a really mad sci-fi look 30-storey building that would have changed Southwark Street completely, had it not already been ruined very thoroughly by all that stuff that's arrived next to Tate Modern, not to mention the Shard and co at the Eastern end. In fact this outlandish tower was ruled out in 2015, to be replaced by something much blander.<br /><br />Personally, what is most offensive about all these buildings - tall, short, ugly, beautiful - is that they are being built for people with upwards of a million to spend on a flat they probably won't even live in. How odd that in the 60s and 70s the only people who lived - or even wanted to live - above 20 storeys in central London were council tenants. Now most of those great towers of Barbican and elsewhere, built with public money to give everyone a decent place to live, &nbsp;have been privatised. Those are tall towers, so is Trellick. Trellick is near Paddington. Many who used to hate it now think it's a great experiment in vertical living. That Paddington Pole, with a visionary council behind it, could have been a continuation of that experiment.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_102AC1nMs8/WGfhujx-_xI/AAAAAAAAG3o/cgCRMZB8OGEr94YJruYP93cUTNdhbbCLQCLcB/s1600/Gagarin-tower-from-above.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_102AC1nMs8/WGfhujx-_xI/AAAAAAAAG3o/cgCRMZB8OGEr94YJruYP93cUTNdhbbCLQCLcB/s320/Gagarin-tower-from-above.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Impression of the 30 storey Gagarin tower designed for <br />Southwark Street, but kicked out by planners last year.&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table>A lot of the best anti-tall towers stuff is coming from the <a href="https://twitter.com/CampaignSkyline" target="_blank">Skyline Campaign</a>, which seems to be a global pressure group pulling together lots of local protests. While much of its activity seems well justified, it also seems to forget that any new building - especially a large building like St Paul's or &nbsp;the neo-gothic mass of St Pancras - ruins somebody else's view.<br /><br />No point crying over London's ruined skyline - that milk was spilled many decades ago. Really, some dear rich people's view of St Paul's through a telescope from Richmond Park has been desecrated by a large residential tower in Stratford? Oh dear! Oh calumny. Those poor dear Richmond residents. What about the residents of the Patmore estate in Battersea who used to have a nice view across the river. Now all they see are the steel skeletons of yuppie towers, as their windows are shaken and their lungs filled with grit by the passing of hundreds of trucks bringing cement and steel to the site, every day for the past three years?<br /><br />We're fighting the same battle but from totally different perspectives. You can like tall buildings, and want more of them, without being a capitalist baby-eating property developer.<br /><br />Every time someone creates a good new viewing point, they destroy many other people's view.<br /><br />The people who built the Shard have changed almost everyone's view of London. But they have also given us all something new and interesting to look at, a new landmark that we can claim a bit of. I've said it before, and I stick to it: the Shard is a better building than London deserves. It is a perfect new landmark for this dirty old city in the mud, and the way it shines out on a changeable day, visible from almost every zone 2 or 3 high street, gives everyone an immediate sense of location, like GPS only better.<br /><br />Of course the Paddington conservation lobby are now protesting against the bulky cube, for which they are in part responsible. Of course they want to keep their nice bits of W2 just as they are. Which is just as bonkers as me wanting London to be as dirty and dangerous and cheap as it was in 1976.<br /><br />We can't always get what we want, thank god.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-59522247472111276122016-12-11T12:35:00.001-08:002017-01-07T05:16:21.498-08:00The Battersea end of the Nine Elms nightmare: is there an uglier road in London?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I8Pi2En_leE/WE20IG3QU-I/AAAAAAAAG1g/P0CqwznNL7AP26vWkK_15MuAVP6vTKrqACLcB/s1600/queenstownrd-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="436" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I8Pi2En_leE/WE20IG3QU-I/AAAAAAAAG1g/P0CqwznNL7AP26vWkK_15MuAVP6vTKrqACLcB/s640/queenstownrd-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Look what they've done to our road, ma! Look what they've done to Queenstown Road. &nbsp;This long final strip of Queenstown Road, from Battersea Park roundabout up to Chelsea Bridge, was always a sort of runway or ramp, a diving board from which south London likely lads and lasses launched themselves into the monied worlds of the King's Road, Chelsea, Westminster and beyond.<br /><br />Mods, rockers, boy racers used that half-mile of tarmac as their catwalk or drag strip. Bikers would meet at the tea hut on the south side of the bridge en route for their <a href="http://www.rescogs.com/2013/10/chelsea-bridge-bike-night-memories/" target="_blank">Friday night runs out to Heston Services and back</a>. &nbsp;That bridge, with its Christmas tree lighting, &nbsp;was always a potent symbol of the gap between north and south London. Posh and arty on the north side, industrial and a bit rough on the other.<br /><br />Now, it's getting bland on both sides. &nbsp;The money-zombies have taken it for themselves. They've taken over the Queenstown bit, the whole length of the bit that faces dear sweet Battersea Park. And soon the road that continues on the north side will be overshadowed by the Chelsea Barracks re-development. The views into Battersea Park are still there, but that knockout close-up view of the great looming power station has gone completely.<br /><br />Look at this photo - how on earth has this happened? People joked about how absurd the old<br />Observer/QVC building, Marco Polo House, was. This place - occupied briefly by the supposed rival for Sky TV, BSB (later BSkyB as Murdoch added its scalp to his knapsack) - was a veritable cathedral of restraint and good taste compared to what we see now.<br /><br />Looking north towards the bridge from the Battersea Park roundabout, it seems that three or four bulky, mass-market holiday cruise liners have backed up against the road. Those horrible blunted curves. Wrap-around balconies in some dismal white stone-look material.<br /><br />It seems they have used every available inch to shove their bulbous bodies as close as possible to each other and to the public realm, the street.<br /><br />Are these the "affordable" bits of this monster development? Or are the people paying their £850,000 plus happy to stroll around their balconied decks, looking straight across at another block which is identically ugly to the one they live in?<br /><br />Tell me, please, I really don't get it.Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-20194250782626505842016-12-10T10:08:00.000-08:002016-12-10T10:35:47.792-08:00Soseki centenary passes unmarked as Clapham museum closes<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xRaf7KdKLv8/WEciKoG0xFI/AAAAAAAAG0E/J0CTNSTA49kfy5wIHwNTamcC2s_bXFuRQCLcB/s1600/P1110379.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="434" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xRaf7KdKLv8/WEciKoG0xFI/AAAAAAAAG0E/J0CTNSTA49kfy5wIHwNTamcC2s_bXFuRQCLcB/s640/P1110379.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;">Waste disposal trucks load up with the display cases from the Soseki in London Museum. Looks</div><div style="font-size: medium; text-align: start;">&nbsp;like Clapham has lost another of its already pitifully short list of interesting places to visit.</div></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Last week - on Friday December 9 in fact - it was the hundredth anniversary of the death of one of Japan's most revered novelists, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natsume_S%C5%8Dseki" target="_blank">Natsume Soseki</a>. Unsurprisingly, this date went &nbsp;unmarked in the Clapham street where the famous writer lived during 1901-2.<br /><br />In fact, it's sadder than that. Ironically, just a few weeks before the centenary date, the small museum dedicated to Soseki at 80b The Chase was apparently dismantled, and is now closed for good.<br /><br />Earlier this year, the owners of the Soseki Museum in London announced they would be closing down in 2017 because of the increasing costs of keeping it open.<br /><br />Then, on a cold bright afternoon early in November, a couple of bright yellow rubbish trucks parkked up outside the block. Soon, the workmen were bringing large glass-fronted display cabinets and huge sheets of plate glass out of number 80, and tossing them into the back of the trucks. You could hear the glass shattering.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iYXo7WLBEm0/WExG0uN_j2I/AAAAAAAAG1E/jjnrkBnMm-kH8XLWQfiKsPIx_cny4rIVACLcB/s1600/soseki-library3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iYXo7WLBEm0/WExG0uN_j2I/AAAAAAAAG1E/jjnrkBnMm-kH8XLWQfiKsPIx_cny4rIVACLcB/s320/soseki-library3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Part of the Soseki museum's immaculately displayed collection<br />of the author's published works - now sadly dispersed.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />The trucks sped away, and a "for sale" sign went up outside. At the same time a first-floor 2-bed flat in this block went on the market for well over half a million pounds: was it 80b?<br /><br />Unsure whether this was actually the last gasp of the museum, I checked the doorbell. The notice bext to the buzzer giving opening times had gone. No answers from the buzzer. I rang the museum's phone number. The line was dead, gone.<br /><br />Of course the museum always did close down for the winter. But all the evidence now suggests it has closed for the last time. All that is left in this street to commemorate the fact that great Japanese writer lived here is the English Heritage Blue Plaque on number 89, opposite the museum, where Soseki actually lodged.<br /><br />Oh, and the Victorian pilar box which Soseki tourists always seem to find fascinating.<br /><br />A few months back, I visited this obscure museum that shared the same building I've lived in for the past three decades (see:&nbsp;<a href="http://microgroove33.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/catch-it-while-you-can-claphams-soseki.html" target="_blank">Catch it while you can: Clapham's Soseki museum</a>). It displayed a small but fascinating collection of photos, books, documents and artefacts relating to <a href="http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/en/webmagazine/2014/01/soseki.html" target="_blank">&nbsp;Soseki,</a> and also sold some of his works in translation. &nbsp;The curator was also a great source of info on Japanese literature in general.<br /><br />I think the museum was purely private project, funded by a Japanese scholar and businessman long resident in London. All credit to him for opening this museum, and for keeping it going for so long. I can't imagine the £4 entry fee covered much of the costs.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sJ1M8UcUqMU/WExHf6opzsI/AAAAAAAAG1I/_kePigHfDdQg51RYYpPHSXteoyNIHeKfQCLcB/s1600/soseki-dignatries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Natsume Soseki museum closing down" border="0" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sJ1M8UcUqMU/WExHf6opzsI/AAAAAAAAG1I/_kePigHfDdQg51RYYpPHSXteoyNIHeKfQCLcB/s400/soseki-dignatries.jpg" title="Soseki Museum in London, Clapham, London SW4" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The entrance area of the Museum included this display of photos of various<br />distinguished (mainly Japanese) visitors it had welcomed over the three<br />decades of its existence</td></tr></tbody></table>Of course the museum was much better known in Tokyo than in London, and every summer there was a regular trickle of Soseki pilgrims from Japan crossing the Common and wandering down the street in search of the museum. Pointing it out to elderly Japanese tourists was a regular and pleasurable duty. Just another strange aspect of life in this borough that has now gone. Life is that little bit flatter as a result.<br /><br />Despite his importance in the development of modern Japanese literature, and despite his creatively fertile if very miserable stay in London, Soseki is still hardly known in this country. A few years ago Penguin re-issued a few of his best-known titles in &nbsp;their Classics series, but these are rarely stocked in any but the most specialist bookshops.<br /><br />Clapham library held just one of his novels; typically, I found a better selection in Peckham Library, not even in the same borough! (Clapham is in Lambeth, Peckham in Southwark).<br /><br />If anyone ever actually reads this entry, I imagine the reaction to it would be a simple"so what?" - and certainly the loss of a very small and eccentric museum is hardly a big deal in a world so full of tragedy, death and suffering. Personally I think Soseki has a lot to teach us about ourselves, and I think a much bigger audience could enjoy his work, if they knew about it and could access good translations.<br /><br />Above all I think the closure is sadly symptomatic of what is happening across London and all of southern England. Realising the maximum value of property is paramount; god forbid that anything as airy-fairy as culture and memory should stand in it way.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-28184317026048434992016-12-09T03:11:00.002-08:002016-12-09T03:54:50.363-08:00'Tis the season to download some fine podcastsThe battered, dust-filled shoebox with the motley collection of Christmas decorations is once again dragged out of its hideaway above the hot water tank.<br /><br />The remnants of five decades worth of tarnished tinsel, plastic baubles, one surviving glass bauble, papier maché angels, lights that no longer work. Add to this a 2009 Waitrose Xmas pudding with real cognac, a gift that has yet to be opened, and probably won't be - and you're ready to face the season.<br /><br />For a decade or two my personal Advent treat was listening to John Peel's Festive 50 countdown. Then Peel died, the 50 was no more, and there was a big gap in that strange collection of repeated experiences that - for me - made Christmas Christmas.<br /><br />But now that gap has been filled. Yep, I've acquired a new listening habit, the depleted stable of Christmas/New Year traditions has a new, very 21st century member. It's an Advent Calendar, but not the type that offers stale sickly chocolate behind cardboard shutters. It's <a href="http://www.holdfastnetwork.com/drt/" target="_blank">Daniel Ruiz Tizon's Advent Calendar</a>, a sequence of 24 daily podcasts recalling his past Christmases, and always asking the question: will it ever be possible to love Christmas again as much as we did in those distant times?<br /><br />These bundles of memories, deeply autobiographical and rooted in a certain area of south London, but also deeply resonant for anyone who has grown up in the UK over the past few decades. Each 12 minute episode arrives like a little gift-wrapped memory bomb. I'm a lot older than Daniel but the references to life in the 80s and 90s are as powerful as any Proustian madeleine.<br /><br />"When you live in Lambeth, you learn not to pick up the snow". Well, that was true in almost any urban area where dogs roamed the parks and pavements.<br /><br />If you like your wine extra dry, your lemon very bitter, and your oil extra-virgin, this is the advent calendar for you. Catch it today: we're not even half way there yet. Listen, and like me get hooked. But don't cheat - one day at a time please. As with the chocolate variety, there was always one lirttle piggy who scoffed the whole lot on December 1, and suffered as a result.<br /><br />Literature has Dickens' <i>A</i>&nbsp;<i>Christmas Carol</i>; TV has &nbsp;<i>The Snowman</i>. Now podcasting has its own Christmas classic. Listen!Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-5690697295981493362016-11-28T12:15:00.000-08:002016-11-29T01:22:09.447-08:00One jazz festival, two buildings, freedom, democracy, love and a stupid blog<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zkMu7c33OrE/WDyenfWg-EI/AAAAAAAAGxA/QIrbLCvUiTkKYmI827qpjQe1xjyt1t8CQCEw/s1600/LJF5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="454" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zkMu7c33OrE/WDyenfWg-EI/AAAAAAAAGxA/QIrbLCvUiTkKYmI827qpjQe1xjyt1t8CQCEw/s640/LJF5.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eve Risser (far left at piano) and the White Desert Orchestra blew everyone away with an astonishing 90 minute free set on the final day of LJF 2016</td></tr></tbody></table>At first this blog was going to be about music on vinyl and cassette, record shops, second-hand bookshops, charity shops and other analogue stuff. &nbsp;It quickly went off piste and started ranting on about property developers and library closures and all manner of outrages on the sensibility of a disappointed old fool living in a London he no longer understood. &nbsp;But, by coincidence, the last batch of posts have all been about music in one way or another, and this one will complete that series. It's about the free-est of all free music, jazz music, and the delights of two jazz-filled afternoons, courtesy of the wonderful <a href="http://efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk/" target="_blank">2016 London Jazz Festival</a>.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cRw3cCh-PJc/WDyenWHZowI/AAAAAAAAGw8/7pgTCxUJdlMQQObgafZRTrm_ElPGY50twCLcB/s1600/LJF1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cRw3cCh-PJc/WDyenWHZowI/AAAAAAAAGw8/7pgTCxUJdlMQQObgafZRTrm_ElPGY50twCLcB/s400/LJF1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Revelations as Hackney Young Musicians challenge the jazz:classical<br />music divide at the Festival Hall. Note the thunderous dual drumkit set<br />up, one of many reminders of the great Sun Ra &amp; his Arkestra</td></tr></tbody></table>The first of these was at the <a href="http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/royal-festival-hall" target="_blank">Festival Hall</a> - yes, back in the Clore Ballroom, scene of last month's National Poetry day events. &nbsp;You just can't fault the <a href="http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/" target="_blank">Southbank Centre</a>:&nbsp;yet again on a cold Sunday afternoon a cultural refuge for old vagrants like self,&nbsp;serving up a feast of free, fresh and surprising jazz music for anyone who happened to be around. This was the opening weekend of&nbsp;the festival, and the event was dominated by young musicians.<br /><br />Over five hours, four big groups took the stage, from the <a href="http://www.rwcmd.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Royal Welsh College of Music</a> &amp; Drama; the <a href="http://www.hackneyservicesforschools.co.uk/Catalogue/School-Improvement/Music-Service" target="_blank">Hackney Music Service</a>/LSO "Classical meets Jazz" project; a band from the <a href="http://www.gsmd.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Guildhalll School</a> and finally the <a href="http://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/whats-on/music-events/a-chamber-choir-and-shapeshifter-double-bill" target="_blank">Trinity Laban Shapeshifter ensemble</a>.<br /><br />All through the afternoon, a growing audience was treated to a diverse and exciting range of music. Like many others I drifted in and was quickly hooked - in my case, by some truly astonishing collisions of well-known jazz and classical standards from the young Hackney/LSO group. At one point they seem to be playing Gustav Holst and Sun Ra pieces simultaneously: the two pieces of music fused and intertwined and separated out again in a thrilling way.<br /><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FDDp9l1hmfA/WDyPuZIaLaI/AAAAAAAAGwo/ce8u2bDIye4tclrS3tH2EqJ37duDiNy5ACKgB/s1600/IMG_20161113_165418109.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FDDp9l1hmfA/WDyPuZIaLaI/AAAAAAAAGwo/ce8u2bDIye4tclrS3tH2EqJ37duDiNy5ACKgB/s400/IMG_20161113_165418109.jpg" width="400" /></a>Equally intriguing to watch the big Guildhall project, (<a href="https://vimeo.com/115924530" target="_blank">Im)possibilities</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;their guest-star vibraphone player, &nbsp;Orphy Robinson. He played as an equal member of this big ensemble, but when his solo slot came round you see the others rapt in admiration, feeding on his brilliance, firing some truly explosive funk off off each other's skills and energies.<br /><br />The music that seemed to draw people in from the many corners of this massive arts complex was the funky stuff, and of that there was plenty. A good few blessed moments when total sonic chaos suddenly seemed to crystallise out into a broken madly dancing off-beat, linking back to the root of all jazz, all blues, all music.<br /><br />The finale was a sort of jazz symphony in six movements written by Mark Lockheart. This was complex, subtle music. The players were the Trinity Laban Shapeshifter orchestra, and a clutch of professional stars, including &nbsp;<a href="http://www.polarbearmusic.com/" target="_blank">Polar Bear</a> drummer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seb_Rochford" target="_blank">Seb Rochford</a>, but without his trademark afro. That great explosion of wiry hair seemed such a good visual equivalent of his incendiary jazz-punk. But here has was taking a much lower profile, his drumming super-sharp but restrained, tied to the composer's score or the conductor.<br /><b><br /></b><b>Hard and angry jazz in London's greatest &nbsp;brutalist citadel</b><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X8qGVdzLsLw/WDyen4a2_pI/AAAAAAAAGxI/iS5JrX5qn7Yuz-ru6tB70uUOIZgInjDuwCLcB/s1600/LJF7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X8qGVdzLsLw/WDyen4a2_pI/AAAAAAAAGxI/iS5JrX5qn7Yuz-ru6tB70uUOIZgInjDuwCLcB/s400/LJF7.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Medium cool: Israeli trumpeter Itamar Borochov wins over the whole of the <br />Barbican crowd with a passionate, note-perfect musical storm</td></tr></tbody></table>A week later, more free festival jazz, &nbsp;this time over the river to the 1970s response to the Southbank....that is to say, the Barbican Centre.<br /><br />The Barbican arts centre is even more astonishing, buried deep within the apparaently fortified City of London &nbsp;housing estate, with its three gaunt, beautiful concrete towers and its high wall and walkways. Inside it's so beautifully crafted, the wood-block flooring and hammered concrete walls, &nbsp;fabulous 70s style lighting, the weird vistas and angles and the many levels....it's a magical place with a great space for free performance in the main concourse.<br /><br />I love the Barbican and everything it stood for, although these days those council flats are occupied by rich city types. One thing for sure - we'll never see anywhere of this quality, and on this scale being built in this way in London, ever again.<br /><br />Again, the ground-level foyer was the scene for a full Sunday afternoon programme of free jazz. As I arrived, an amazingly sharp Israeli-based band led by trumpeter <a href="http://www.itamarborochov.com/" target="_blank">Itamar Borochov</a> were playing a storming set fusing a sort of hard bop with rich Levantine and Maghrebi flavours.<br /><br />It was the next and final band that really made me write this piece: a French musician, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Risser" target="_blank">Eve Risser</a>, and <a href="http://www.everisser.com/blank-1" target="_blank">the White Desert Orchestra</a>. &nbsp;Here was a group of highly talented instrumentalists making music that truly defied labelling. In other words, it was jazz.<br /><br />That for me is what jazz is or should be. Not background plinking in a posh restaurant, not endless noodlings in a posh concert hall, but engrossing, mind-expanding, body-shifting sounds. For the first five minutes or so of the Paris-based band's performance, I wondered if I would stay (and quite a few were leaving). They were doing that thing where each band member seems to be playing a different piece, &nbsp;at maximum volume, in a crescendo of discordant noise, racket, jangling the nerves, setting teeth on edge, and then it all changed.<br /><br />This was music for a the new world, incredibly angry at times, amazingly soft and comforting at others, benignly overpowering. It was a sea or ocean of sound, you could jump in and let it knock you about a bit, then it would calm and you dive through it. You just had to trust it!<br /><br />And after first piece, an almost shellshocked audience hesitated before bursting into applause, and then Eve Risser herself (who had been in the shadows at her grand piano, stood up and began to explian in beautifully French English what the next piece was about, then cracking up with laughter when the English words failed her.<br /><br />A few minutes later she was laying into her beautiful shiny Steinway grand like a pile-driver. So much anger, but so wonderfully controlled! At each slam of the piano-lid the crowd jumped or winced; it all made sense in the context of this piece. Memorable!<br /><br />Then I watched from another angle and saw the sax player pick up this massive baritone sax. It was as big as he was, I swear, and he was not a small bloke. He made this monstrous horn emit great honks of sound, like lead bubbles, which plopped out and hit the first three rows of the audience like Atlantic breakers on a north Devon beach. One &nbsp;man was flinching at each blast, and then grinning like mad.<br /><br />This is what jazz should be, is: surprising, astonishing, crazy. &nbsp;And for me at least, the only way to really enjoy it is to be at a performance, to see the musicians close-up, watch how they interct with their instruments and with each other and with the audience, that is &nbsp;for me about 80 per cent of it. The best recording on the best hi-fi is just a reminder of this if you're lucky.<br /><br />But the true music criticism needs to be left to the professionals, the informed, and in this case there is no better place to read deeply intelligent reviews of festival performances than the London Jazz site.<br /><br />All I can say is thanks to the LJF, wish I'd gone to dozens more of their events, will try to next year if by some miracle I've managed to hang on by my cracked nails to my small perch in this maddening city.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f1SFqH1c56c/WDyenTBrSyI/AAAAAAAAGxE/S85hg_akZIokid5sJ2r3XSe0MLFesit0ACLcB/s1600/LJF-final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="460" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f1SFqH1c56c/WDyenTBrSyI/AAAAAAAAGxE/S85hg_akZIokid5sJ2r3XSe0MLFesit0ACLcB/s640/LJF-final.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thanks, thank you so much, thanks Eve Risser, and the amazing White Desert Orchestra, for bringing your strange, violent,<br />hallucinatory, erotic and poetic music to the UK.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-20639145888562186812016-11-13T06:09:00.001-08:002016-11-15T09:59:05.475-08:00Busking reggae sax player triggers Brixton tube station epiphany<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zJUuz4fdJK8/WChyHiNsUCI/AAAAAAAAGqk/-KsPRyklT7ggffvf2fIEHJU3d5NrgPSVwCEw/s1600/megumi-dancer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Miss Megoo and her sax on a cold November evening, Brixton tube station, London SW2" border="0" height="422" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zJUuz4fdJK8/WChyHiNsUCI/AAAAAAAAGqk/-KsPRyklT7ggffvf2fIEHJU3d5NrgPSVwCEw/s640/megumi-dancer.jpg" title="Brixton tube station is famous for its brilliant buskers: here's Japanese reggae saxophone star Megumi Mesaku warming up the homecoming commuters" width="640" /></a></div><br />Approaching Brixton tube station early on a cold, dark November evening, the sublime rhythms and<br />haunting saxophone melody of some early Jamaican reggae warmed the air, you could even see people's walking pace change to get into step with the beats coming out of a small portable speaker-amp.<br /><br /><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7YNF8v4uSpQ/WChxunw_UKI/AAAAAAAAGqc/fWuShpALcmg8fnz68zxTUkrerM8vt-OEwCLcB/s1600/megumi2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7YNF8v4uSpQ/WChxunw_UKI/AAAAAAAAGqc/fWuShpALcmg8fnz68zxTUkrerM8vt-OEwCLcB/s400/megumi2.jpg" width="281" /></a>The sax melody was provided by one of the many talented buskers <a href="http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/?s=busker" target="_blank">this location is famous for</a> - and in this case I was almost certain I knew who she was. A tall, slender young woman of Japanese appearance, in a beautiful full-length striped and tiered silk dress, matching silk scarf, her jet-black hair pulled back tight in a bun, and secured with a huge crimson flower on the right side of her head, swaying to the music, playing what looks like an old, much-loved alto sax, the case open on the floor in front of her feet.<br /><br />If you like ska or reggae and live in London you will almost definitely recognise this striking young woman - she's unmistakably the sax player who joined <a href="http://www.gazrockin.com/thetrojans" target="_blank">The Trojans onstage at Gaz Mayall's </a>set&nbsp;at the Notting Hill Carnival, who's a key member of the wonderful south London ska band, T<a href="https://www.facebook.com/TOPCATSKA/" target="_blank">he Top Cats</a>, and a truly big name in the international reggae/ska world.<br /><br />And here she is - I was 98 per cent certain it was her, that is Megumi Mesaku - busking outside Brixton tube station on a cold November evening.<br /><br />She's already something of a legend. She's played sax with many of the great names of Jamaican music, and many of the greats of jazz, soul and funk too. They include Max Romeo, Maceo Parker, Rico Rodriguez, Dennis Alcapone, Laurel Aitken, and numerous other big names from the ska and reggae world, young and old.<br /><br />So is this really Megumi, busking? I am 99 per cent sure it is. Look at her. One hundred percent certain. But I was too shy and stupid to ask.<br /><br />It's still rush hour at 7.30pm around here, crowds surge out of the station as each new train arrives, and her music always catches a few of the people as they leave, detaining them, some just stand and smile and nod, some &nbsp;are swaying, but only one person is really dancing. A young black woman with shining eyes, she's already been taken over by this gorgeously fluid music and is using the whole pavement outside the station as her dancefloor, deflty avoiding the commuters as they swarm around her.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OL7Frvnhncw/WChx9neSbNI/AAAAAAAAGqg/PrF6yr5W4W0LKyWhKedSU67Su6zAiUd0QCLcB/s1600/brixtondancer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="269" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OL7Frvnhncw/WChx9neSbNI/AAAAAAAAGqg/PrF6yr5W4W0LKyWhKedSU67Su6zAiUd0QCLcB/s320/brixtondancer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />The sax player - yes, it has to be Megumi, also known as "MissMegoo" - has that characteristic <br />modesty, always smiling in response to any applause, always acknowledging any donation, there, alone with her mini-sound-system, filling the air with promises of warmth and love and a better future.<br /><br />She's playing lots of reggae and ska classics, but also some old soul and R &amp; B numbers. At one point I could've sworn she even played some Glenn Miller.<br /><br />So that was it - the epiphany thing, it was the sort of very much wanted antidote to weeks and months of gloom and fear and anger, from Brexit through to Trump. A tonic, a reminder of what we could be.<br /><br />A realisation how grateful we should all be to all the people who come here from other continents and countries.<br /><br />Here was a Japanese woman playing her interpretations of the music of the Jamaican ghetto outside a tube station in one of the most racially-mixed areas of London. All happening, just like that, perfectly normal.<br /><br />Anyway, if that was you, Miss Megumi, thanks for providing some light in the gloom. &nbsp;You are surely one of this city's many musical treasures.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x_L9L0E7C70/WChylFr9FZI/AAAAAAAAGqs/p9bE7P_rwdg9aiheCbC7R9qPMBwqpyT8gCLcB/s1600/brix-sax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x_L9L0E7C70/WChylFr9FZI/AAAAAAAAGqs/p9bE7P_rwdg9aiheCbC7R9qPMBwqpyT8gCLcB/s640/brix-sax.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: &quot;hind&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span>Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-12271806857228811822016-11-12T13:01:00.001-08:002016-11-23T04:22:58.083-08:00Cultural chat in the Library as Clapham remembers Smiley<i>Smiley and Me </i>was another of Lambeth's excellent programme of <a href="http://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/" target="_blank">Black History Month</a> events - and this time it was dealing with quite recent history, focusing on a time &nbsp;(the late 70s and early 80s) when this area was on the frontline of a new style of home-grown reggae music, London's answer to the Jamaican dancehall toasters and DJs.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hvGYKGhBWJI/WCSwhhpapEI/AAAAAAAAGpM/erbD_pxkh_Yew0tp_W-03VAWBxy1GYD-QCLcB/s1600/smiley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hvGYKGhBWJI/WCSwhhpapEI/AAAAAAAAGpM/erbD_pxkh_Yew0tp_W-03VAWBxy1GYD-QCLcB/s400/smiley.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here's the book - a rip-roaring read if ever there<br />was one, the true story of a pair of likely lads making<br />it big in the London reggae music scene of the<br />1980s. That cover pic, showing Smiley (left) and Asher,<br />looks like a phot but in fact is an astonishing painting<br />by their friend and former Saxon Sound System<br />fellow artist, Peter King.</td></tr></tbody></table>The new generation of young DJs and MCs emerged from the big council estates running from Battersea to Lewisham, via Clapham, Stockwell, Brixton and Peckham.<br /><br />They attached themselves to the big established sound systems of the time - but they'd also moved on from the Rasta-influenced roots reggae of their elders. Their lyrics were sharper, still socially conscious, more directly relevant to life on the streets and in the estates of inner-city London. These lyricists were often witty, often challenging, and nearly always in competition with rival sound-systems.<br /><br />A handful of these homegrown proto-rappers broke through to become mainstream pop stars. Among them were Lewisham's Maxi Priest, &nbsp;Papa Levi and Tippa Irie from Brixton &nbsp;– and&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_Culture" target="_blank">Smiley Culture</a>&nbsp;and his constant friend, co-conspirator, and sparring partner Asher Senator, both from the Stockwell-Clapham area.<br /><br />One of the top lyricists of that era's musical innovation, Asher Senator was recently at the Clapham Library to talk (and rap) about his new book, which tells the story of his enduring friendship and musical partnership with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_Culture" target="_blank">Smiley</a>.<br /><br />The book, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Smiley-And-Me-By-Asher-Senator-1390320517894538/" target="_blank">Smiley and Me</a>, tells Asher's version of the fascinating, exciting, hilarious and finally tragic story of the Stockwell school kid, David Emmanuel, who became Smiley Culture, tasted international fame and stardom with his two hit records,<i> Cockney Translation</i> and <i>Police Officer</i>, but then ran out of luck in a big and painful way. It's a handsome, nearly 400-page, well illustrated book published by Vitow (Voice in the Open Wilderness) Media - which is, aptly, also based on the Clapham-Stockwell borders.<br /><br />&nbsp;I say "talk" - this was Asher Senator, the man famous for fast chatting in a continuous rhyming style. As you might expect, he'd brought a big 2016 version of a ghetto blaster with him, and told at least half the story on his mic, in exactly the style of those early-80s tracks he and Smiley used to light up London's dancehall nights with.<br /><br />The book is truly thrilling memoir, the pace is quick and the stories come thick and fast. It's written from the point of view of a gifted lyricist and performer who was a sort of Boswell to Smiley's Dr Johnson, or maybe Dr Watson to some skanking Sherlock. Asher, although a star MC in his own right, was always slightly in the shadows cast by his more fame-and-fortune-seeking friend.<br /><br />As the blurb says, it pulls no punches, describing in some fairly grisly detail the downward spiral that seemed to set in after Smiley got mixed up with some heavy-duty gangsters - initially, it seemed, to frighten off local rivals who resented his success. But that decline went on right up to Smiley's mysterious death in March 2011, during a police investigation at his final home - a house in Warlingham, which is a semi-rural village on the far southern edge of south London. A single stab wound to the heart, which a jury later decided was self-inflicted: what a sad, hideous end for such a talented man.<br /><br />But this night, Asher concentrated more on the upward years, giving &nbsp;great readings from some of the earlier chapters of his book. There's a lot of poetry in his writing. The chapter on their first sound system, Buchanan, based at "Lansdowne in Stockwell, Just behind the station" - begins with a eulogy for "Miss Coarsey".<br /><br />No, she was not some inspirational school teacher. "Miss Coarsey" was the name they gave to their battered old van, which was an essential bit of equipment for any London sound system at the time, used to transport the huge speaker cabinets and amps around the clubs and party venues, along with the crew of DJs, MCs, rappers, techies and hangers-on. Despite needing push starting, Miss Coarsey did not let them down until a vengeful ex-girlfriend set her on fire.<br /><br />Get a taste of Asher and Smiley <a href="https://soundcloud.com/soundtapedotcom/buchanon-1981-feat-smiley" target="_blank">on Buchanon here</a>, dating right back to the beginning of their musical careers.<br /><br />These passages, this music, &nbsp;reminds me strongly of Franco Rosso's 1980 film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080406/" target="_blank">Babylon</a>, covering much of the same territory, just a little earlier. &nbsp;Only 35 years ago, yet it seems like a different century....well of course it was a different century, a different millennium, a totally different world.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2cf407e7_wE/WCcXRhcFugI/AAAAAAAAGps/C_32usTG_s8NW3s4R7ucOymrUafFj3yJACLcB/s1600/smiley-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Smiley Culture's 'Police Officer' 12inch 45rpm single, Fashion Records, cover, outside Brixton(?) police station, 1984" border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2cf407e7_wE/WCcXRhcFugI/AAAAAAAAGps/C_32usTG_s8NW3s4R7ucOymrUafFj3yJACLcB/s400/smiley-cover.jpg" title="Smiley Culture's 'Police Officer' 12inch 45rpm single, Fashion Records, cover, outside Brixton(?) police station, 1984" width="397" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Smiley Culture's 'Police Officer', the top-selling 12inch 45rpm single of that<br />year, released on Battersea-based&nbsp;Fashion Records. Looks like<br />&nbsp;the cover was shot outside Brixton(?) police station, 1984</td></tr></tbody></table>Their breakthrough night at the <a href="http://www.theransomnote.com/culture/film-articles/the-four-aces-club/" target="_blank">Four Aces Club in Dalston</a> is a beautiful moment: the first time they ever get paid (a whole fiver for both of them!) for their MC-ing. Note that at this time it is always "they", with Asher and Smiley working like a team - which continued even after Smiley performed on <i>Top of The Pops</i> and became a big star.<br /><br />The early chapters paint a vivid picture of South London street life in those bleak late 70s winters, through to the 1981 and 85 Brixton riots and beyond.<br /><br />It's a strange read for anyone like me who lived in the same area at the same time, actually a few streets away from some of their favoured locales.<br /><br />How often I lay awake a night, hearing the police sirens and helicopters, and wondering what the youth were up to now. As a sort of low-rent yuppie, weaned on a lot of jazz and blues, a little punk and then tons of roots reggae, I was deeply attracted to that scene, even though I might as well have been a million miles away.<br /><br />The nearest I &nbsp;got was a few nervy trips down Coldharbour Lane, a few evenings in the Atlantic pub, where with a few other white-boy thrill-seekers and dub-addicts, I payed my local taxes and got to see the young Courtney Pine coming on like a reborn Coltrane.<br /><br />Meanwhile Asher and Smiley were signed up to Fashion Records, which operated out of the same building (and had the same management) as Dub Vendor, the legendary record shop at the Clapham Junction end of Lavender Hill. As this blog <a href="http://microgroove33.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/falling-like-leaves-in-autumn-no-4-dub.html" target="_blank">noted previously, Dub Vendor eventually went out of business after it was affected by the fire started during the riots of August 2011</a>.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9wsL90uoLAU/WCeAZ-XXqyI/AAAAAAAAGp8/ysS2KZMfHT8dNE1PNWGq-8iKWRXXc_HlwCLcB/s1600/smiley-inner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Nice how he has printed the lyrics on the back cover of this 12 in single...." border="0" height="397" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9wsL90uoLAU/WCeAZ-XXqyI/AAAAAAAAGp8/ysS2KZMfHT8dNE1PNWGq-8iKWRXXc_HlwCLcB/s400/smiley-inner.jpg" title="The back of Smiley Culture's 1984 12in single release on Fashion Records, Police Officer" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There is Smiley, and there are the lyrics to Police Officer, helpfully<br />printed on the back of the cover of the 1984 Fashion Records 12in<br />single - which became Smiley's biggest -selling hit.</td></tr></tbody></table>There are so many great and hilarious stories in this book, you have to buy it and &nbsp;read it for yourself. It has that picaresque drive of a ghetto-based Don Quixote, with Asher as his Sancho Panza. Or maybe the Laurel to his Hardy, or the Butch Cassidy to his Sundance Kid. All those elements are there.<br /><br />One story I can't resist mentioning happens while they're on tour in Jamaica, taking their London coals back to Kingston's reggae Newcastle.<br /><br />First night in a hotel, they get a visitor who offers to show them round the sights and nightspots. It's none other than the best of all the new wave of Kingston based dancehall reggae singers and MCs, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Levy" target="_blank">Barrington Levy</a> - the guy whose carnival anthem, <i>Under Mi Sensi</i>, is a Kingston-style cousin of <i>Police Officer</i>, what with its chat and its dialogue. But which track came first?<br /><br />Barrington, however, never get the kudos that Smiley has received in the UK for more or less defining a new London dialect. Teachers and academics and top children's writers have all quoted the lyrics of Cockney Translation as being the record which took this form of speech out of the ghetto and into youth culture nationwide. Children's author, poet and teacher Michael Rosen even included Cockney Translation as one of his eight most precious bits of music for the BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs programme.<br /><br />There's immortality for you!<br /><br />Asher, always the more level headed one, despite having plenty of his own troubles, was the survivor. He's gone on to launch a charity, Code 7 which helps kids in the estates get into the same sort of music business he and Smiley excelled at. Better &nbsp;to clash with sounds than with guns and knives.<br /><br />On the night he was a total charmer, and gave his all to the performance of many lyrics, even though it was a ridiculously small but very responsive audience. Also at the event was his publisher, Rickardo Quintyne-Wright of Vitow Media, who is also involved in film production. Read this book and you will soon be thinking, when are they going to make a big-budget movie of this? It has all the elements and more. Let's hope it happens.<br /><b><br /></b><b>Details and where to buy your copy:</b><br /><b><br /></b><b><i>Smiley and Me</i>, author Asher Senator, edied by John Masouri, illustrated by Peter King, &nbsp; published by&nbsp;<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><a href="https://vitowmedia.com/" target="_blank">Voice in the Open Wilderness (ViTow) Publishing</a>; 1st edition (15 Dec. 2015).</span><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">ISBN-10:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">0993511007</span></b>Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6028560459583421628.post-40567414104385457632016-11-10T04:27:00.003-08:002016-11-14T11:27:11.258-08:00A brief life of Bob in seven songs: radical author stirs up some deep Wailer memories at Brixton Library Black History Month eventAnother&nbsp;<a href="http://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/" target="_blank">Black History Month</a>&nbsp;is over, &nbsp;and you have to admit that Lambeth's events department and the library services organised a really excellent programme of local events. Of dozens of talks, exhibitions, &nbsp;performances and shows, the event on Wednesday 19 October at Brixton Library was always going to be a big draw: the title, <a href="https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/events/bob-marley-roots-reggae-revolution-%E2%80%93-brian-richardson-black-history-month" target="_blank">Bob Marley: Roots, Reggae &amp; Revolution </a>- ensured that.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l1yFbjhijyE/WBUEZTF14pI/AAAAAAAAGm8/K_kqDj4tyFYsHbw1YGYZkBZuen0LXAsnQCLcB/s1600/marleybook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l1yFbjhijyE/WBUEZTF14pI/AAAAAAAAGm8/K_kqDj4tyFYsHbw1YGYZkBZuen0LXAsnQCLcB/s400/marleybook.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>Sure enough by 7pm the seating had all been taken as Bob's totally familiar but always surprising songs kept everyone happy until author <a href="http://www.mansfieldchambers.co.uk/brian-richardson/" target="_blank">Brian Richardson</a> stood up to begin his talk.<br /><br />Self-effacing from the outset, he joked that he realised most of the audience would probably rather just listen to Marley's music all evening...and of course there's always going to be an element of truth in that. But we also wanted to hear what new things he had to say about such a well-documented modern hero.<br /><br />Brian Richardson is a prominent activist and campaigner against racism. He's also a practising criminal barrister and - not surprisingly - a deft public speaker. He seemed so modest and self-effacing as he explained the background to his book, and he played the whole event in a very cool and open manner. He straightaway admitted he was indebted to the Booker Prize-winning novel of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlon_James_(novelist)" target="_blank">Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings</a>, for the structure and approach of his book, which chronicles Bob's development against the political turmoil of Jamaica, the USA and the great East-West divide of that era.<br /><br />In fact he even borrowed a bit of Marlon James' structure for his talk, covering Bob Marley's political and spiritual development in seven songs.<br /><br />He pointed out how Bob became a musician, a songwriter, an artist - just at the time that the politics and history of newly-independent Jamaica became a microcosm or crucible of all the great global events at the time of decolonisation, &nbsp;and of the ensuing conflicts, left versus right, rich versus poor, material versus spiritual.<br /><br />But this was no dry history lecture. As soon as the first song fired up, large parts of the audience were swaying their seats, and just about everyone was smiling. The song was the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybmPHD7FPcQ" target="_blank">Wailing Wailers' 1965 hit Simmer Down</a>, which - even so soon after Jamaican independence - showed that the honeymoon was over and that things had got back to normal - poverty, corruption, oppression, violence in the streets.<br /><br />Over the course of an hour, Brian played six more Marley songs, all of them well-known classics, each capturing a specific phase of the singer's career. We had the obviously political titles sich as Get Up Stand Up, &nbsp;the reflections on Trenchtown poverty, and his celebration of late 70s London punk meets roots scene in Punky Reggae Party.<br /><br />That time when The Wailers were more or less in exile in the UK proved to be a rich seam of memories for some of the audience. One guy remembered playing football with Marley in a park, which led on to discussion of the various stories of Bob's toe injury and whether or not it led to his fatal cancer. (Most likely not, is the answer, though it probably didn't help either).<br /><br />Another audience member was present at the famous open-air <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Love_Peace_Concert" target="_blank">One Love Peace concert</a> in Kingston Jamaica, April 22 1978, &nbsp;when Bob got the two opposing political leaders, Edward Seaga and Michael Manley, to shake hands on stage.<br /><br />Brian asked if she remembered Peter Tosh's performance earlier at the same event, when, according to some accounts, legend, he gave the two leaders a very critical lecturing, then fired up a giant spliff as a very public display of his opinion of the government's supposed crackdown on ganja smoking. Sadly she couldn't remember - she was very young then, she said. (Other reports suggest it was Jacob Miller who did the most spliff-smoking, but Tosh certainly talked hard politics).<br /><br />There were other memories of Bob in London, specifically the time when the Wailers performed at a primary school in Peckham, and also of his visits to a Rasta centre in Kennington.<br /><br />It was this sort of living memory that made the whole event so different. When Brian got onto the Exodus era, with Marley both espousing but also challenging some of the Rastafarian ideas, a big debate broke out. Several very vocal audience members said that &nbsp;once again - in the light of recent increase in racist attacks in the UK and USA - nothing had changed, and that the only sensible option was to get out of here, take the Black Star Liner back to Ethiopia, re-patriation, to turn their backs on rotten Babylon.<br /><br />Others disagreed, saying they were here to stay, British citizens, with exactly the same rights as any other, and that this status was not up for negotiation. To an ancient and fairly dumb baldhead like me it was surprising, even sad, that this debate has resurfaced, or bubbled up, gained new heat, what 35 years after the first Brixton riots proved a wake-up call to an essentially racist establishment.<br /><br />So, it is taking the establishment a veyr long time to get out of bed, and recent events suggest it's eyelids are once again drooping. But what did we see in Brixton just a month before, the <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/" target="_blank">Black Lives Matter </a>movement. Have things gone right back to the 60s? Brexit and Trump suggest that's getting dangerously close to reailty.<br /><br />But this was a great event, and we need more. It was packed out, lively and reasonably mixed in terms of age and ethnicity - though to be honest, seeing how Brixton is now, I'm surprised there weren't more young white hispter types there. We left soon after the speechifying finished at about 9, but according to sources it seems it went on way past official closing time, when debate gave way to music, and everyone turned to dancing. Exactly how any event in the name of Bob Marley &nbsp;should end.<br /><br /><b><i>Bob Marley: Roots, Reggae &amp; Revolution</i> by Brian Richardson, published by Redwords, February 2016, available from the <a href="https://bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/view/41824/Bob+Marley%253A+Roots%252C+Reggae+%2526+Revolution" target="_blank">Bookmarks, the socialist bookshop</a>, at £7.99 plus £2.50 postage.</b><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Bill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00363747659861110373noreply@blogger.com0